Re-visiting Khin Kee Handmade Fishball Kway Teow

I was surprised to see Khin Kee open in the late evening. I always had the impression that they do breakfast and lunch. Maybe dinner but not late evenings. The old uncle wasn't there. It was some Chinese lady running the shop. She's managed to nail the bowl of noodles right down to the lack of awesome flavours just like how the uncle does them.

My consolation was the extra portion of fried fish cake.

Jiakali has shifted to a new spot in Chinatown's Food Centre

Jiakali closed their old shop and shifted to a new unit (Red Zone, #02-095 Chinatown Complex Market and Food Centre, 335 Smith Street). The menu has changed a little and they've also upgraded from plastic utensils!

This was their pork trotter curry. Unusual to say the least to have pork trotters in curry. Meat from the trotter was tender with jiggly bits of skin and fat. Nice.

You can top the rice with a fried egg.

This was the only bone from the entire portion of pork trotter.

葡吉手工包子 (Pucci) at Songjiang Nanjing Station

Came across 葡吉手工包子 in the train station selling handmade buns. Bought from them a couple of times. Not all are great. I'm talking about you 花卷 with cheese. The ones with vegetable stuffings were pretty good.

This with cabbage and vermicelli (高麗菜包).

And this with mushrooms and some green vegetable (香菇素菜包) which I couldn't identify.

Ningxia Night Market (寧夏夜市)

Ningxia Night Market (Ningxia Road, Datong District, Taipei) this time. This was so much smaller than the one at Raohe. It also appeared to be much more packed in the small main street.

Got this mung/green beans smoothie thingy near the entrance of the market. Nice. There's loads of mashed mung/green bean packed into the cup.

Tried something called zhi gao fan (知高飯) which was basically a small rice bowl with some braised pork trotter, bamboo shoots and an egg. Pretty good. The other bowl was dan bao xia ren tang (蛋包蝦仁湯) - basically soup with egg and prawns. Yes, those orange things were prawns coated in some flour.

Giant chunky chicken skewers. Not unique to this market but we've seen them a number of times and decided to just get them to see if they were like what we imagined. These were flavoured with salt and turmeric as far as we could tell.

Was a major pain moving through the street of this night market. It was an experience for sure, one that I do not care to repeat.

巨林美而美, Yitong Street @ Zhongshan District, Taipei

Breakfasts at 巨林美而美 (No. 127, 1 Yitong Street, Zhongshan District, Taipei). 'Breakfasts' because we came here more than once.

We had sandwiches with 3 meats. Custom order not from their menu.

Dan bing with onion. This sorta reminded me of prata.

Radish cake. Not bad tasting. Liked the crusty surface.

Bacon, cheese and chocolate sandwich. Not bad tasting. Also obviously not on their menu.

Peanut butter, egg and bacon sandwich. Another custom order. Peanut butter's a little thin.

Coffee's from a machine. Not the old school kind I thought this stall would have. A little thin for my blood for morning coffee.

Tea was likewise thin. Don't think they use milk here as well. Maybe creamer.

A few days later......

Tuna, bacon and egg sandwich. Custom order. The tuna seemed to be a little sweet but otherwise tasted like how I imagined it.

Radish cake with chilli. That chilli packed a bit of punch from the both heat and garlic. This combination with a molten yolk fried egg rocked.

Another time......

Ham, cheese, fried egg and strawberry jam. I could barely taste the ham or cheese.

阿城鵝肉 (A Cheng Goose), Jilin Road @ Zhongshan District, Taipei

Lunch at A Cheng Goose (No. 105 Jilin Road, Zhongshan District, Taipei, tel : +886 930 105 668). It was a 45 minute queue and we were wondering then if it was worth the moments of our lives we were going to waste waiting in line for it.

Fortunately the food was good enough that we never dwelled on the time spent after we had started eating.

Their smoked goose was outstandingly tender and smoky. This was a breast meat order which they served by mistake but it was delicious enough that we didn't want to make a fuss of it. 

Pretty decent sweet potato leaves.

Those goose blood curds in mala soup were delicious. There's a bit of heat in the broth and it's on the whole more savoury than spicy.

Spicy braised stinky tofu (臭豆腐). I get the impression that this had more stinky flavour than the fried ones we had from Raohe Market.

Platter of goose hearts and liver. Both were delicious.

Encore of goose. This time, it was the regular poached version. We got ourselves the lower quarter of the bird with drumstick. Meat was smoother and fattier than the earlier breast cuts and I liked this as much as the smoked goose with both bearing their own merits. 

These were sausages with trumpet mushrooms - the latter were in small chunks, dispersed into the fillings of said sausages. The texture was apparent but I couldn't taste those mushrooms because the flavour was mostly just the savoury sweetness from the fatty sausages.

Goose oil rice. Flavoured also with fried shallots. Good with everything we've ordered because you only live once.