Dan Shui (淡水)

Some bites in our day trip to Dan Shui.

Pancake with cai por (pickled radish). Peppery ones at that. 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.

周照子 (Chou Chao Tzu), Xining Road @ Wanhua District, Taipei

周照子 (No. 167, Xining Road, Wanhua District, Taipei, tel : +886 2 2381 2580) appears to be a fusion of Taiwanese styled teppanyaki and Taiwanese porridge. There's a teppanyaki bar along with a menu for a whole slew of stir fried dishes. Come to think of it, those stir fried dishes might have come from the teppan anyways. 🤔

Most of the dishes were in small sharing portions.

There's stir fried ox tongue with scallions which we had seconds of. Tender, chewy and greasy in a good way.

Pretty decent cai por omelette which we had seconds of as well.

Pork liver in sweet sauce. If memory serves, also had seconds of.

Beans sprouts stir fried with beef fat which paired deliciously with rice/porridge.

Another dish we had seconds of was lamb stir fried with onions and soy milk miso. This was pretty good.

Love their oysters stir fried with spring onions and fermented black bean.

Pan fried mackerel was okay-ish.

Not so much into the halibut. Meat wasn't firm.

Stir fried cabbage.

All the dishes were made to go well with their bottomless rice and porridge with sweet potatoes. That and sides like salted duck egg, meat floss or fermented bean curd to name a a few that one could add on via self service for 25NT each.

This was sugar cane with milk which we ordered out of curiosity. It did appear to be slightly milky but tasted exactly like regular sugarcane juice.

Jiufen (九份)

Finally at Jiu Fen. We told ourselves to keep our expectations moderated because we've grown wise to the ways of social media whores. The location was magical in its own ways but not necessarily along the old street (老街) where it's mostly and unimaginatively featured.

Here's some of the stuff we ate. 'Some' because it was almost impossible to get photos of everything we ate in the crowd.

Tried some cream puffs. Decent tasting. The orange one was sweet potato custard.

Squid sausage was pretty peppery. No squid ink flavour here.

Finally got some grilled eringi after seeing them around in numerous street stalls. The mushrooms were a little juicy and a little spongy. Tasted much like how I imagined them. 

Snails. The chilli sauce packed a bit heat and vinegar. So while it added some zing, it also mostly overwhelmed the natural briny flavour of those snails.

Mega Sausage McMuffin with egg from Taiwan's McD

I got one of these because pork sausages.