Raohe Night Market (饒河街觀光夜市)

First time going to a night market in Taipei. This one was the Raohe market (Raohe Street, Songshan District, Taipei). Went a little wild with the food.

First time trying 大腸包小腸. While the Chinese name translates into big intestine wraps little intestine, the outer layer isn't an intestine - it's made of glutinous rice. The garlic bits stuffed into it helps make the savoury sweet sausage easier to inhale in the tube of glutinous rice. Now that I've tried it, will probably never bother with them again.

There's a stall that has amazing thin sliced roasted pork belly. The fat readily melted in the mouth and those crackling was crunchy and not hard. One of the more memorable eats here.

The other thing I liked a lot was guava with the plum sauce. There's a spin the wheel with each purchase and we won a second bag of guava from that.

Squid fried rice - the rice was bad. Possibly the worst fried rice I've ever had. Squid was not bad. Am gonna call it out as the worst eat here as a reminder to self never to get anything from the stall again if we ever came back.

This stall did a variety of braises where you could pick your choice morsels and they'd pack it up with the braising sauce. Nice.

A stall selling oyster omelette. Just oyster and eggs, no batter. This was nice. Oyster was fat and tasted good.

This was pandan flavoured kanom krok. The pandan flavour was weak. 

First lu rou fan in Taiwan from this stop. I'm gonna just call it okay tasting because there wasn't anything about it that was outstanding. It levelled up to pretty good with the chilli. Stinky tofu was also okay-ish. Rocked with that salty bean sauce though.

There're these pastries called hu jiao bing (胡椒餅) which are stuffed with peppered pork and spring onions or chives. This stall at Raohe market was suppose to be one of the better ones. Queue's long and moves pretty fast. Nice sesame flavour from the pastry and the fillings were definitely peppery. I think it's ok...meaning that while I didn't dislike it, I wasn't particularly impressed. Am unlikely to get them again if the opportunity presented.

Re-visiting Alice Boulangerie @ Icon Village

Quick one from Alice Boulangerie.

Basque bleu cheese tart. 😬

Not as melty as I imagined but the blue cheese flavour was a superb blend with the creamy sweetness and the buttery pastry without being overpowering. 👍🏼 

Nicely done Paris Brest. Choux pastry was a little denser than I imagined though.

Not bad hōjicha cream latte.

Couldn't get past the orange Americano. 😬 While there are probably a few renditions of this drink around, this one was I suppose, a bit more......indulgent. That coming from the orangey sweet creaminess. 

Hong Lim Curry Puff (芳林咖喱角), Alexandra Village Food Centre

Came across this stall (#01-53, Alexandra Village Food Centre, Blk 120 Bukit Merah Lane 1) and was curious because the Hong Lim curry puff stalls that I knew of were Tanglin Crispy Curry Puff and Tanglin Crispy Curry Puff Original. They're apparently the Halal branch of the former. Tried their yam puff. 

Crispy skin's a little bland and the hot yam paste filling were just lightly sweetened hot yam paste. Would prefer the paste to be a little sweeter. It's a decent pastry but also kinda forgettable.

Happy breakfasting at Ya-Mahyuddin Al-Jailani

Back at Ya-Mahyuddin Al-Jailani, getting a couple of favourites for breakfast.

Today's bananas in their banana egg cheese prata were back to those old tangy sweet ones. 🥳 I was half worried that it'd be those that tasted like plantains that they had used previously. These were so good with the salted cheese.

More of the maggi goreng mutton with extra keema. I wouldn't be exaggerating much if I described this to be half noodles and half keema. This was so good.

Teh halia to finish.

Vission, Staunton Street, Hong Kong Central

Came across Vission (LG/F, Chui Man House, 7 Staunton Street, Soho, Central, Hong Kong, tel : +852 5545 6787) while trudging uphill at Central.

Left the bakery with loot.

It happened that we forgot to refrigerate the banoffee pie. So the cream layer over the top collapsed as we unboxed. 😂 Turned out to be a fortunate accident because this tasted great at room temperature. The flavour from the cream, the banana and the coffee were all more pronounced. Fuck me this was good. 

Pistachio custard danish - this tasted like it had a layer of pistachio butter over pistachio custard in that buttery danish cup/crust. Very nice. 👍🏼

Their lemon pound cake was totally overshadowed by how impressive the other earlier two were. Just a lemony sweet glaze over pound cake. But I'm sufficiently impressed to try other things from them.

Doughman, Cheung Yee Street, Lai Chi Kok

Some loot from Doughman (G/F, Cheung Lung Industrial Building, 10 Cheung Yee Street, Cheung Sha Wan, Hong Kong). The shop became suddenly very crowded after we got in and started looking around. Anyways, pretty nice bakes. Corn pastry was nice with a layer of sweet cream (or was it custard?) beneath the corn. Tie guan yin madeleine didn't have any tea flavour.

As we go on at Umar Ali Cafe

Part 4 of the compilation of eats from Umar Ali Cafe. Probably the last one for a very long time. ABC has opened up another branch at the old premise of Kheng Nam Lee Teochew Porridge.

Mee hoon goreng mutton. Pretty tasty. Love the sunny side up.

The mutton came in little bits. Not keema but diced bits. 

Samosa. Skin reminded me of epok epok/curry puff.

In retrospect, with the skin and the curried potato fillings, it's pretty much a pyramid shaped curry puff.

Their chicken malai tikka was smoky, salty and piping hot. If anyone's wondering, the chicken's marinated in cream/yoghurt and spices before getting onto the grill. Not bad tasting with the lime and onions cutting through the creamy saltiness.

A few days later......

Egg briyani. Briyani was kinda disappointing. Flavour was thin, unlike the robust savouriness from the rendition at Anjappar.

Mutton keema masala's actually delicious but I'm never getting it again because of all the chopped up bits of coriander. Too bad for me because I liked their creamy nutty masala.

Maggi goreng also pretty good. Default is non-merah. Today's fried egg has crusty edges unlike the previous time so now I know the type of egg we get is...a game of chance depending on who's frying them.

An undefined number of weeks later......

They introduced idli on the menu. Available only for breakfast so we came by to try. These were small and a little bit..."rubbery". Fermented rice flour flavour there at least.

Bananas for the banana appam apparently uses what's available, not a specific type. Bananas we got this time weren't the same as the ones from the last time. These paler yellow variety, whichever they may be, had a more flat flavour. Felt a little déjà vu-ish of the banana prata experience at Ya-Mahyuddin Al-Jailani.

A few months later......

Nasi goreng merah mutton keema like what we've had previously. This one was just so moreish.

Tried their double egg chilli prata. Basically a rendition of their double egg with slice chilli padi sparingly scattered in. These packed pretty substantial heat. 🔥