Post dinner meal at 溫州大餛飩 (Wen Zhou Big Wonton)

I do know where is from! I was super hungry really late one night after dinner and I was wandering around behind my apartment when I realized that there are no such things at 24 hour delis in Taipei. There's only 7-11 and OK mart. Not that those things are bad, just I wanted something that resembled a meal on a plate. I came across a chain called 溫州大餛飩 or loosely translated as 'Wen Zhou Big Wonton.' This is why I hate translating things into English, it sounds stupid. Anyway, I got a mixed wonton noodle dish with 老虎醬... tiger sauce ha. The sauce is that pile of crap paste in the middle of the ultra thin noodles, which is sitting in a bed of chili oil and delicious pork wontons. Trust me, when you have the munchies, McDonald's is good and all, but this hits the spot like no other. The noodles mixed with sauce taste slightly sweet, yet at the same time... appropriately spicy. Having raw scallions on top makes for another sharp taste if you happen to bite into a mouthful. After you're done with the noodles, the wontons are left sitting in a pool of oil that I can only describe as liquid fire. Seriously, they put Szechuan Gourmet to shame. It doesn't hurt that they're pretty damn good on their own. Thin, almost translucent, yet resiliently chewy skins make for an odd yet pleasant texture in the mouth. Did I mention it's a chain (i.e. SUPER cheap... I think it was 50 NT or $1.50).
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Unknown shaved ice place...

So, I actually have no clue where that bowl of shaved ice is from. It was in the middle of sequence of pictures that I don't remember eating. In summary, I'm just posting this picture because it's in my food folder, and I don't like having pictures go to waste. Plus I'm pretty sure none of you are actually reading my blog anyway, I figure pictures are a better way to trick people into looking at my posts. From my excellent skills of deduction, I can tell you that it's red bean and taro (and it might be 臺一 'Tai Yi' shaved ice). I like red bean and condensed milk. I also like taro soaked in syrup and condensed milk. I assume it was pretty good. Crap... now I miss Taiwan. Anyhoo, expect many many more of these posts where I offer virtually no worthwhile content. I just want an excuse to post more pictures.
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Tofu City... or at least I think that's what it's called (豆腐花成)

I keep saying I have posts left from Taiwan (and boy do I ever), but I haven't done anything in the past few months about it. I'm super bored what with Winter break and all, so I have a bit of time to chip away at that never ending queue. On a random day of walking near SOGO, I came across a shaved ice dessert place that I'd never seen before. I actually have no clue what attracted me to go in, considering the store front looked pretty groddy, and the owner was a woman with a very 'intimidating' look... take that as you will. Maybe I was just craving something sweet/cold. Honestly it's been way too long for me to remember my motivations for eating haha (it's a miracle I'm even posting these things at all!). Anyhoo, I stumbled in, took a look at the menu, and settled on that mess of goose crap green you see to the left.


First up, here's the menu in all its glory (and prices too)! Still too lazy to explain everything, but basically they had a small twist on traditional shaved ice. It should be noted that nothing on their menu is over 70 NT ($2.50) so it's definitely cheap. Their style is to shave half a container of ice, then to sandwich a ball of ice cream in the middle of the pile, then to drizzle the syrup over top. This allows for a crapton of combination possibilities, since they have rather exotic ice cream flavors like... mango.


Just a close up. I chose to go strawberry inside green tea shaved ice. Despite the unappealing olive green syrup, it tasted pretty good. The syrup was super concentrated so it had the bitterness of matcha, but just enough to mesh properly with the ice (which, once melted, tasted kind of like a green tea smoothie). The strawberry ice cream was... more or less, meh, but it was a nice contrast of sweetness to the bitterness. I can't say I was overwhelmed by their 'ingenuity,' but it was satisfying (if I recall correctly haha), and cheap... which is way more important. As far as the name, they're supposedly better known for their dessert style tofu. I think the green goop appealed to me more for some reason.
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Stalk... I mean contact me

Not that any of you care, but if you're so inclined to want to email me... you can do so from my profile page on the right. Feel free to ask me questions, but I can't guarantee that I'll answer them, or even that my answers will be correct, but hey... you can try! Uh, if you're my friend, could you not send me stupid emails? I'd appreciate it. In closing, and on a completely unrelated note, that picture to the left is indeed a pile of elephant crap. It's sort of out of scale, it's about 4' wide. I just couldn't find any other picture that would fit with this post, so yeah. Enjoy. I don't know why I took a picture of it either, so don't ask that.
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