Continuing from Taiwan – 2.2.1 Taichung 台中…

The first stall we came upon was a beverage stall. Taiwanese love their milk so much that they add milk into almost any beverages they can come up with. Papaya milk, mango milk, watermelon milk, kiwi milk, bitter gourd with honey and milk, strawberry milk and so on…

The first food we had at the night market was this really, really, really weird man tou 馒头, which the Taiwanese called Ge Bao 割包. It has probably all four tastes, sweet, salty, sour and a little bit of bitterness. Inside the man tou, it has a slice of braised lean meat, peanuts, sugar, pickled mustard and probably a few more ingredients.

Our first bite left everyone speechless and had a WTF look on the face. I wouldn’t say it tasted badly or heavenly, it was just plain weird. I certainly don’t know how to describe the taste. That being said, we ended up ordering another piece.

Continuing our walk, we saw a lady preparing a huge pot of oyster noodles 蚵仔面线 and some other food.

We sat down, ordered a bowl of oyster noodles, glutinous rice with minced meat and a plate of fried oyster.

Glutinous rice topped with minced meat 米糕.

Oyster noodles 蚵仔面线.

Fried oyster 蚵仔煎. The Taiwanese’s version of fried oyster is very soggy, wet and slimy. Also, they top it with loads of peppermint leaves, which make the dish tastes even weirder for us Malaysians.

We had mua chee 麻芝, featured in the travel guide book that we used and also by many local magazines. You can have your mua chee stuffed with red bean paste, black sesame pastes, finely crushed peanuts or have it plain.

Walking further down the street, we saw another stall which was featured in the book we used as a guide. It’s Big Sister Xu’s deep fried stall. There were a number of people queuing up to buy whatever the stall was serving.

You can choose whatever you want to eat, ranging from chicken chops, sausages, tempura, tofu, eggs to vegetables and many more. Select your stuffs and hand it over to the guy, they will deep fry it and spread it with their home made special sauce.

That was the end of our first visit to Taiwanese’s night market. However, our food tasting journey didn’t end there as while we were walking back to our hotel, we saw a shop that sells nothing but milk jellies and puddings.

We bought one for each flavour.

Clockwise from top left, mango, aloe vera, black sesame, original / milk, red bean and lotus seed.

The shop claimed that not even a single drop of water was added during the process of making the jellies and puddings, which I think is highly believable as the taste was strong and full flavoured.

My favourite, black sesame pudding.

That was day 2 of our Taiwan trip as we got ourselves ready to go Sun Moon Lake 日月潭.

Related posts:

1. Taiwan – 6.4 Kaohsiung Liu He Night Market 高雄六合夜市
2. Taiwan – 12.2 Taipei 台北 – National Palace Museum 故宫博物院, Fisherman Wharf 渔人码头 And Shilin Night Market 士林夜市
3. Taiwan – 2.2.1 Taichung 台中
4. Taiwan – 9.3 One Bowl Small 一碗小, Yang Zi Ying 杨子莹, Justice Bun 公正包子
5. Taiwan – 11.1 Hualien 花莲, Jiufen 九份 And Keelung 基隆

Tags: Big Sister Xu, 炸香香, 牛乳, 米糕, Deep Fried, 蚵仔, 蚵仔煎, 蚵仔面线, 鲜奶酪, 麻芝, Fresh Milk, Fried Oysters, Glutinous Rice, Jelly, Milk Shake, Minced Meat, Night Market, Oyster Noodle, Oysters, Pudding, Taichung, Taiwan, Zhongxiao Road, 割包, 台中, 台湾, 夜市, 徐大姐, 忠孝路夜市