Chubby Burger (恰彼漢堡), Keelung Road @ Xinyi District, Taipei

Chubby Burger (No. 165, Section 1, Keelung Road, Xinyi District, Taipei, tel : +886 2 2768 6060) came by way of recommendation. It's all smash burgers on the menu with a variety of toppings. Burger's kinda similar to what one can get from Shake Shack or BurgerLabo. Wouldn't mind coming back if I had the chance.

PBB Chubby with two smashed beef patties, cheddar, bacon, grilled onions and peanut butter. Not bad. Seems like peanut butter in burgers is a Taiwanese thing. Will not be the first time I'm seeing them.

Chubby Staff Special with smashed beef patty, hash brown, Swiss cheese, Chubby cheese dip, ham, pickles and aioli. This was good. Savoury and cheesy.

Fries were kinda like those from McD's.

Cinnamon apple fried pie. Not like McD's. Drier fillings but has a good cinnamon flavour.

Pretty decent banana chocolate milkshake.

Selfish Burger (自私漢堡), Zhuangjing Road @ Xinyi District, Taipei

Selfish Burger (No. 180 Zhuangjing Road, Xinyi District, Taipei, tel : +886 2 2345 0825) is in the game for burgers that are fun. Aside from one classic burger on their menu, most of the rest are more...progressive/experimentative and flavour forward. No so much for purists. But what do I know.

There's a Smoky Cocoa burger for their fall/winter. Beef patty, bacon, caramelized onions, caramelized bananas, cocoa spread of sorts and rockets. Chocolate's assertive with this one, countered by a fruitiness from the caramelised onions. And then bananas, bacon and beef. Rockets fell by the wayside. I think it's not bad, interesting even.

Blue cheese burger. Blue cheese sauce, rockets and balsamic vinegar. I don't know if the intention was to keep the blue cheese intensity moderated. I mean, it's there but I personally feel more presence would be nice. 

Fried chicken with cream cheese and crushed honeycomb. That and a horizontal cut slice of apple beneath. The flavour combination worked. I liked this. I could come back for this. That fried chicken was outstanding.

There're options to upgrade burgers into a combo meals that comes with a side and a drink. 有點饿 (a little hungry) includes fries while 超級饿 (super hungry) tops those fries with onion rings and a fried chicken wing.

Fish sticks were much nicer than the name suggested. Those are real fingers of real fish meat, some with skin on still.

Their brown sugar whiskey milk shake was nicer than appearances suggest.

Maple green onion croissant from Moo

Came across these maple green onion croissant from Moo at Taipei 101. It's nice. Spring onion-y, garlicky and a bit of sweetness from the maple syrup presumably.

Shilin Night Market (士林夜市)

At this point, the night markets have lost some allure. Most of them were selling the same thing. Even though Shilin appeared to be larger than Ningxia, it wasn't particularly interesting because Raohe had kinda filled things in for us. Here's a couple of things we tried that I managed to get photos of.

Tried the intriguing Prince Cheese Potato (王子起司馬鈴薯) stall. Got the one with everything I think. The cheese used was nacho cheese sauce. It's nice in a cheap processed food with maybe a bit too much salt and carbs kind of way. Will not mind eating again. 😬

Tucked at the side of the market was a stall selling raclette. Didn't see that coming. The beef they used was tender and much better tasting than I imagined. My only gripe with this was insufficient cheese.

Lambo Ramen, Zhongzheng Road @ Tamsui District, Taipei

We learnt of this place from possibly IG and subsequently YouTube. Let's just say the experience was nothing like what social media conveyed.

Service was of low quality peppered with reluctance here. There was a bunch of kids running the shop and they didn't look like they were interested in taking orders. They looked like they were interested in getting people not to step in before the opening hour at 5.30pm.

Availability was pathetic. Half the items on the menu were not available.

Quality felt kinda mediocre after the impression we had gotten from the YouTube video. For a lamb specialist, they aren't actually good.

This order was supposed to feature red yeast (红麴) noodle. It was only after they had served the order and we asked about the noodles that they informed us that the red yeast noodle wasn't available and they replaced it with the regular noodle. Inexcusable bad form. Tantamount to cheating and lying.

Supposedly signature bowl with a 红烧 broth that didn't have much lamb flavour. Pretty meh.

We had a bowl with lamb shank. Shank's pretty tender. But like all the other bowls with soup, there's not much lamb flavour going on.

The lamb lu rou fan actually has lamb flavour. Portion was tiny and the picture menu misled us into thinking that we would be getting a whole egg instead of a half. Deliberate false advertising.

Some tofu skin dish. Don't remember much of it.

Apparently, one could bribed to give them 5 stars with one free egg.

Ameo Pudding Town (雨尾部町), Zhongzheng Road @ Tamsui District, Taipei

Came across Ameo Pudding Town (No. 264, Zhongzheng Road, Tamsui District, Taipei) while wandering around Dan Shui. They're a shop for soft serves, puddings and dorayakis.

I was initially intrigued by their espresso sundae. Turned out to be something like an affogato with too much ice cream so the coffee's kinda weak due to the ratio.

The other sundae which we got had balsamic vinegar and olive oil was delicious. Would come back just for this.

Dan Shui (淡水)

Some bites in our day trip to Dan Shui.

Pancake with cai por (pickled radish). Never had these sweet pancakes with cai por before. Pretty good tasting with a lot of crunch - a texture that one normally doesn't get in these.

Red bean ones were also nice. Love that they weren't overly sweet. Loads of beans inside.

Custard ones were kinda lightweight.

Salted duck egg with powder blue shells.

They were salty, but not as salty as the ones we have back home.

The century egg shells were speckled.

The crystalline blacks were latticed with dendritic salt crystals. According to Gemini, these patterns are known as sōng huā (松花) in Chinese, are a sign of a properly made and high-quality century egg.

Yolk was creamy and molten. These were good tasting century eggs.

Stopped for some seasonal blueberry kakigori at this shop.

White bitter melon juice with honey. The drink was actually refreshing with the bitterness edging in at the back of each gulp.

早安美芝城 Good Morning, Yitong Street @ Zhongshan District, Taipei

Came across 早安美芝城 (No. 5, Lane 66, Yitong Street, Zhongshan District, Taipei) by chance.

Picked up one of their sandwiches which seemed to be running out fast in the morning. This had egg mayo, ham and seaweed. Liked it. The seaweed added more umami to the standard egg and ham combination. 

One could upgrade it to a set that came with soup and drink. We picked their seasonal sweet corn soup and warm 豆漿.

The staff recommended their 3 Cups udon which they claim to be popular and also featured by Youtubers. Got it 大辣. Sweet and savoury and a healthy hit of heat from the chillis. Tasted like pad thai with basil. Those tender pork strips appear to be a standard ingredient for a number of their dishes.

Alaskan cod burger according to the menu. Ok-ish fish burger.

Breakfast plate with garlic bread, scrambled eggs and those sweet pork that were also featured in their 3 Cups udon. Garlic bread's not bad. Also slightly sweet. A number of things which I expect to be savoury appear to be slightly sweet in Taiwan.

Radish cake with eggs and pork strip - same pork as the ones from the breakfast plate and udon. Cubing the radish cake introduces more surface area ration to crisp into the crusty exterior...so that's nice.

A couple of days later......

Radish cake with eggs. No pork unlike the one above. Also wondering why this one wasn't cubed like the one with pork.

Cheese dan bing with mozzarella. This one was good. Saltiness from the regular sliced cheese and stretchy milkiness from the mozzarella. Actually one of the more memorable dan bing I've had this week.