Asian bakeries ftw

This isn't so much a post as it is a thought that I had, which happened to coincide with a picture that I happened to take. American bakeries do their cupcakes and cookies, and variations upon them. Hungarian bakeries (as far as I know) make really overpriced danishes and apple strudels (I'm looking at you Hungarian Pastry shop... grr... $4.50 for 3 bites of an apple strudel). Maybe it's a matter of taste, but for some reason Asian bakeries do the weirdest combination of toppings available, baked into the strangest forms possible, and people still go to buy them. The picture is actually of pineapple buns baked directly into chocolate filled ice cream cones (which were delicious btw). These aren't even that adventurous compared to the dizzying array of hotdogs, Kewpie mayo, egg, scallion, tuna, pork floss etc. buns that you'll find at every bakery. Looking back, I'm not sure why I chose that to take a picture of, but meh... I felt obligated to post it, since at one time I felt it was worth snapping a photo of. Anyhoo, tl;dr... Asian bakers do weird stuff, I still love it.

Posting update... almost done with the Taiwan posts (aren't you sad?), and will make a few posts about NYC before I return to food heaven the motherland.

Additional rant... apparently I'm not allowed to do 'less than 3' for a heart symbol because of 'broken tags.' Wow blogger, fail.
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Yoshinoya, a Japanese take on fast food

I think fast food in America needs a kick in the pants. As much as I love McNuggets and Whoppers, the lack of variety kind of gets boring after a while. Enter something like... Yoshinoya. Basically, what you get is a Japanese 'donburi' meal. Given the choice of beef bowls, pork bowls, chicken bowls, or occasionally signature Chinese dishes like 東坡肉 (basically pork belly slow braised in soy sauce), you're given an East Asian meal at the convenience of a fast food joint. What's not to love? Plus, clocking in at under 100 NT ($3) for even the most expensive of meals leaves my stomach full and my wallet happy. Compare this to McDonald's here, which charges me $8 for a burger meal... leaving me a super sad panda. Anyway, I went with the 'gyu-don' or beef bowl since that's supposedly their 'signature dish' matched with a side dish of snow peas, and green tea. The food is... meh, nothing to write about (ironic that I am writing about it), but not bad. Definitely worth the money, plus... the novelty of getting questionably authentic Japanese food in a commercialized place like this still hasn't worn off. Would I recommend someone go find a Yoshinoya in Taiwan? Probably not. I mean, it's not very difficult to stumble upon one of their buttload of locations, but if you're hungry and don't know what you want to eat... why not?

side note: Apparently there's a location in midtown that serves the food out of styrafoam containers. That totally ruins the illusion of authenticity for me. Why do you have to destroy something I hold so dear to my heart NYC? *cries*
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Formosa Chang... (鬍鬚張魯肉飯)

When I was a little kid, I used to refuse dinner all the time, not because what my mom had made was terrible or anything, I just preferred eating rice with soy sauce and sugar. Yes, that sounds really stupid, but it actually tastes incredible (I still do that sometimes ha). The next logical progression in this soy sauce rice thing... is to add meat to the equation. So as I got older and learned how to not burn my hand on the stove, I'd make myself rice with soy sauce and ground pork. What's the point of this story? Mostly that I love rice and soy sauce pork. Which leads me to... Formosa Chang's restaurant, known in Taiwan as 鬍鬚張 (Hu Xu Zhang). Now the Taiwanese take their minced pork rice, called 魯肉飯 (lu rou fan) very seriously. So serious that they hold national contests to determine the top bowls of this stuff every year, sort of like the beef noodle thing, but less glorified. This place, which is actually a fast food chain (~weird, I know) took 1st place honors in 2008 if I remember correctly. I figured I should at least try it once. Plus the guy on the main logo looks like Leonidas from '300.' Baller as hell.


So first of all, for 55 NT ($1.60 or thereabouts) you get a meal set. That covers a 'large' minced pork rice, with a side dish of greens. From the picture (sorry it sucks, they have crappy lighting), you get a bowl of rice with pickled ginger, a soy sauce egg, and a side of greens, tofu, and cucumbers. First off, that's insanely expensive. I might sound like a miser, but in most places, a bowl of minced pork rice is like... 25 NT, hell I've even seen 15 NT in the boondocks. Basically, they're charging you for Leonidas' endorsement. Second... it's not even that good. I mean, I enjoyed eating it, don't get me wrong, but after the fact I realized that I was still hungry given the serving size, and I also found myself wishing that I had spent the money elsewhere. Sigh, anyway. I'm not going to tell you to not go here, but I certainly won't be going back.

On a related tangent, it's obvious people in NYC love this stuff as much as I do (the pork sauce on rice) since the 'NYC Cravings Truck' has made a killing off their 'secret pork sauce.' Listen. I know how to make that sauce in bulk. If anyone wants to join me in a business venture where we undercut their business... let me know haha.
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I'm still a tourist... (士林夜市) Shi Lin Night Market

I put this post off for a long time. It's partially because I know I can't really do it justice, and partially because, well, there's just so many freakin' pictures to upload that I didn't want to write a super long post. In any case, I'll try my best haha. Anyhoo, no matter what, when I'm in Taiwan, I'm still a tourist. As such, I go to touristy spots like night markets, I get glares when I talk, and I'm pretty sure they're judging me for taking pictures. Yes it's true that I have black hair (temporarily orange) and squinty eyes. I look Chinese. I speak Chinese. It's still blatantly obvious that I'm not native though. People can tell with a quick glance, and when I open my mouth, my somewhat subtle Beijing accent affirms their suspicions. Anyway, my point is, I don't really fit in. So when I had the opportunity I made sure to hit up all of the most popular food spots at 士林 with no regards for my dignity. Starting with... shaved ice. (edit: wow, in rereading what I wrote in that blurb, I realize how incoherent my thoughts are. I mention a bunch of things that are completely unrelated and attempt futilely to explain them. Whatever, it's my blog, and they made sense in my head. Sorry.)


At a place called 仙人掌 (Xian Ren Zhang) or in English... 'Cactus,' I started my days meal. Apparently this shaved ice parlor has been around since the 50's, it was also a place my mom used to frequent back in college, so yeah... it's old as crap (she would kill me if she knew I wrote that, good thing she doesn't actually read the text on my posts). Anyway, they have all the traditional flavors you'd expect... the red bean, mango, strawberry, pineapple, oatmeal, but I chose to go with the sesame flavored shaved ice. Shred as 雪花冰 or 'snowy ice,' it has the consistency of overly airy ice cream, with really fine shards indistinguishable from bite to bite. The sesame flavor was a nice change from the heavy sweet syrups normally associated with shaved ice. Think, tahini ice cream. It was definitely worth the price... regardless of how much it was. Come on, it couldn't be more than $3 at worst. I'd make a trip out of my way to try it, although I doubt I can find the place again without getting lost. Fail.


After going the reverse meal route with dinner first, I headed over to the main food center, which is basically a giant conglomerate of food shacks under a covered roof. This was where I ran into the 大腸包小長 (Da Chang Bao Xiang Chang) translated as 'big sausage holding little sausage' stand. Sorry for the stupid translation. It's just a hot dog. With sticky rice as the bun. I don't know why they can't just call it a rice hot dog.


In any case, for 50 NT ($1.50) you get a fairly decent sized Chinese sweet sausage, roughly 8", roasted over an open flame, and marinated in a variety of flavors (black pepper, vodka, original, spicy, mustard, and garlic), which is sandwiched into a bun made of sticky rice grilled into a compact neat package. They put some other condiments underneath, which I presume was cabbage and the sauce from the picture, and there ya go. Delicious in a bag. I don't think there was anything extraordinary about the stand in the photograph, but you should do yourself a favor and try it for the innovative nature of the synergy between sausage and rice.


I also got a giant piece of chicken. For 50 NT ($1.50... I swear they standardize prices to reduce competition between stands), you get a giant flattened piece of chicken that gets fried in breadcrumbs, and spiced (if you want it) enough to make you hate your tongue. It used to be bigger... I think. Maybe it was because when I first got it, I was like... 14, but maybe they downsized. It's still about the size of your face, and when you consider that 85% is edible, the remainder is bone, that's still a really good deal. I was tempted to go buy pineapple buns at a bakery and sandwich this sucker inside, but my wallet told me not to.


I went back to the shaved ice shop to take a break. This time I got an ume shaved ice. Basically Japanese plum plopped onto shaved ice. I was expecting something kind of maroon, but instead I was greeted with what appeared to be feces on ice. I wasn't too excited to eat it, and when I did, I was sorely disappointed. Overly tart, and oddly crunchy ice completely ruined it. The fact that it looked terrible just sealed the deal. Biggest waste of 40 NT ($1.10) ever.


Final stop on the day was a Thai place that was panda obsessed. To be completely honest, I only went in because they were pimping the panda posters so hard. I love pandas. Be honest, you do too. If anyone hates pandas, stop reading this blog right now. This is a panda loving zone and you're not welcome here. Anyway, I wasn't terribly hungry so I only got some of their more unique items off the menu.


Awww yeah, stinky tofu. I get this all the time, but I was curious as to how the Thai rendition of it would taste. Honestly? No real difference. The pickled cabbage was sweeter than what I expect from a stand, and it wasn't spicy at all, but the tofu was predictably awesome. The skin was sufficiently crispy and still pocked with oil pockets, the inside was spongy and soaked up the sauce like a boss (ha that rhymes), but most importantly, the smell was pungent and insulting from the first whiff. Excellent. This was 45 NT ($1.50) well spent.


Now what's this fried hockey puck of golden deliciousness? I swear to god, I didn't purposely frame the shape with the outline of 'delicious foods.' It kind of just happened.


It's fried ice cream! You're given the choice of ice cream flavors including the traditional vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry, as well as the flavors you'd expect in Taipei... those being red bean, taro, and almond. I chose taro, which would explain the slight tint of purple. I honestly wasn't sure what to expect. They brought it out in a paper bag, which still managed to burn me. I was worried that by the time I had taken my picture and started to eat it, that I'd be left with a draining pool of taro cream. Actually... forget I said that, that sounds delicious. I'm not sure how they did it, but the ice cream was solid... yet yielding, the skin was crispy and piping hot. In some sort of engineering miracle, these... panda workers managed to defy heat transfer. On a completely unrelated side note, my sophomore year materials and energy balance professor said that chemE's invented the McMuffin. I laughed at her at the time... a lot... but I kind of see what she meant now. Anyhoo, methinks maybe some form of secondary starch might've been used to stabilize the ice cream, not unlike gelatin (although that would melt at near room temperature). I give up, my head hurts.


BONUS PICTURE. Panda. Yum. Restaurant. OG kickin' it since 2007. Full disclosure though, the food there really isn't that good. If they didn't have the appeal of a panda, I doubt anyone would walk inside. There were a lot of flies.
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