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.

A breakfast in Taipei

First breakfast in Taipei. Random breakfast shop along Bade Road in Songshan District.

Warm soya bean milk (豆漿).

Some dan bing. The top one has cheese in it.

And luo bo gao. Flavour's quite nice.

Got a breakfast sandwich with cheese, ham and egg. There's some stuff in it which I assume passes for mayo. Sandwich was kinda dry.

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.

Asparagus juice in Taipei

I saw this and decided that I was curious enough to try. There's definitely asparagus in it - and also something sour-ish which I couldn't identify. Overall, was sweet and tasted like a mix of asparagus and water chestnut drink. Do people here actually like this enough for it to become a product?

Family Mart stuff in Taipei

Here's some of stuff we had gotten from Family Mart over the past week. First up was this brand of papaya milk where the flavour reminded me specifically of those Hawaiian papaya with creamy yellow flesh.

Chocolate and cream cheese sandwich. It was what it was.

Pistachio flavour's present for sure but I was hoping that it'd be a bit stronger.

The tea eggs were pretty good tasting. I've had more of these in the past week+ than I normally do in a year usually.

Not nice. Apple jam thingy wasn't particularly apple like.

Pretty sweet, had plenty of watermelon flavour but couldn't taste much of tea. Not good.

Has pineapple flavour. Interesting but won't be getting again.

We spent a while trying to figure the flavour out. It tasted like a mala broth minus the heat. Flavours unusual for sure but couldn't quite reconcile that with stinky tofu. Wouldn't get it again.

Sparking yuzu coffee. I had initially thought it was just sparking yuzu. Not bad. If they had used a stronger espresso, it would have rocked. 

Coffee's sour but I was thirsty and the fizz made it better. I don't mind drinking this again.