Guava Juice

While we were waiting at the airport, I got a can of guava juice from the vending machine to pass the time.

Taitung

A few days before my birthday, we planned a trip to Taitung. The airport code is TTT, so cool. Taitung is in the south and east part of the island, and it just so happens that it rains a lot there. The plan was to leave on Saturday morning to make it there for their small town weekend gathering at the sugar factory. We waited and waited until all the flights were cancelled. Finally, on Sunday afternoon, We managed to snag a flight.

Before our original Sunday morning flight, we went to a random stand by some sort of market and had breakfast:
This is the noodley soup that we had for breakfast on Sunday.

Clockwise, from top right: really fat meat, fried tofu, and fried shrimp.

Essentially, these are fried bones. The white stringy things are ginger, and the mysterious caramel cylinder to the right is a pepper shaker.

What I Do

My first in-store event was at the Chanel in Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, for their PR event promoting their new line of mademoiselle jewelery. It was one of the more painful catering runs because we had to put all the food and drinks on the landing of a staircase, and nobody would consume anything because they were too busy fingering the jewels. Since it was uber boring, I busted out my camera and snapped some shots while waiting for the annoying sales lady to explain to all the publicists the history of Chanel.Eso es squid ink risotto, good to eat but hard to handle.
Dessert features tangerine custard.
Spaghetti twirled around some sort of bruschetta tomato topping, on top of scallops.
Pineapple pound cake with pineapple and strawberry on top.
Mini pizzas, with cherry tomatoes and olives.
Prosciutto wrapped around breadsticks.
The complete tray, including all of the above mentioned and a raspberry crepe-mille-feuille-like dessert.

Late Night Snack

At VVG, we are all friends. The first night of work I worked an Intel event at Champagne 3. Afterwards, me, squid (a really pretty and smart girl who happened to have a word in her name that sounds like fish), wendi (a boy), little an (also a boy), ing tse (the smallest and loudest boys ever), and ze shiang went to Tea Street for an after work meal. They are definitely 4th-mealers, always going out after work.I had "spicy Japanese-style tempura shrimp" (as the menu so lovingly put it). It was basically regular fried shrimp with spicy sauce on top, served with a vat of eggplant. I hate eggplant. The shrimp wasn't bad.

I guess that's what you get when you go to a random restaurant on Tea Street in Taipei.
Shabu shabu? I didn't eat it so I don't know. Despite the record temperature highs this summer in Taipei (reaching 37.4*C), people here love hot pot-like meals.

Tea Street is a street full of stores that sell all sorts of tea, but not the teapot kind. Green tea, black tea, milk tea, almond milk tea, boba tea, almond milk tea with boba, almond milk tea with flan, green tea with fairy grass (shien tsao), you name it, they make it. It is near Dunhua street and Zhong Xiao Road West.

Kahlua on the 89th Floor

Taipei 101 is the world's tallest building, thus snagging the title of highest occupied floor too. A few weeks into my sojourn into the motherland, I sat in the 89th floor observatory (probably the highest point you can go in a manmade building) eating "Big Tom" Kahlua ice cream by myself. I paid probably NT$ 300 for the privilege of looking out on Taipei on a rainy day, and NT$100 with coupon for the ice cream. This past Tuesday I worked a Schneider Electricity event on the 84th floor of Taipei 101 and got to enjoy all of that for free. We also got to ride the service elevator, which goes directly from B2 to 89. The tourist elevator only goes from 4th floor to 89. My ears popped probably 8 times going up.

Auntie BaoLing's Birthday Dinner

These pictures are too great. I've flickered them to do them justice. Really, I'm not lying...it was like a 7 star meal. Food orgasm. SO GREAT.

Returning to Childhood

I remember a time when these "star" snacks used to fit around my fingers. Now, they only fit around my pinky. After being trapped in Taipei 101 due to weather reasons, I sat in their food court and ate these things while journalling. It was like....a Proustian moment without the elegance.

Hou Ling Street Nightmarket

These pictures are from a long time ago. We went to Hou Ling Jie (Literally, Tiger Forest Street) to visit my parents' old apartment where my aunt also lived while we were in the US. There is a small nightmarket there, where you can mass-purchase the cheapest underwear in Taipei. Besides underwear, there is also the regular lineup of nightmarketly foods.

A view of the nightmarket

A typical night market is full of stands peddling all sorts of juices. This one offers ku gua (bitter melon) juice. My reaction = gross! My mom's reaction = joy!

The intestines that were in my mi swa (thin rice noodles) that I promptly removed and placed in my aunt's bowl.

Ice Monster

Shaved ice has gotten a lot of press lately, even making it to the New York Times last summer. I remember growing up and making it at home in Taoyuan. Nowadays, shaved ice is a complicated monster. The most famous sector of town that has shaved ice stores is around Yong Kang street, and the most famous ice place is Ice Monster.
If you haven't had ice from Ice Monster, you have not lived. Ingredients are simple: mango sorbet, condensed milk, kiwi, mango, and strawberry. So TASTY.

Sesame Snacks

Some of the best food in Taipei is sold on street carts, which usually appear at night markets but can sometimes be exceptions. This particular old man makes pure sesame snacks. He takes black sesame seeds, grinds them, and adds just a touch of sugar and compacts the mixture into a thick cake that resembles black shoe sole leather. Dispite the unappetizing description, his sesame snacks are REALLY good. It's chewy and not saccrin-sweet, and completely natural with no additives. He also makes crispy sesame brittle and peanut brittle (Taiwanese style, without that sweet sugary stuff in the middle to hold the seeds/nuts together.) Simplicity = Tasty.

Yun Nan Cuisine

Yun Nan cuisine is typically lighter and less heavily flavored than normal Chinese food. Rarely do you find tons of salt and soy sauce piled in a dish. We went with Paul to a restaurant where we saw Li Ao. Me, aunt, Paul, and the Lao Ban Niang (wife of the proprietor of the restaurant) all took pictures with him. I think he is a famous writer and political theorist.I equate him with the Taiwanese Zizek. He actually ran for president once, something Zizek also did in Slovenia.
The bright green stuff in the bowl is baby pea soup. They really were that young and that green, one of the more interesting and tasty things I've had this trip.
We call the plate of stuff on the right crack mushrooms because they're soo good, the restaurant must have put crack in them. In reality, they're very very finely julienne-ed mushrooms stirfried until dry and infused with a combination of salty and spicy tastes. They are SO good, even for a mushroom hater like me.
The story behind this "over the bridge" soup is that a wife was innovative while bringing her husband meals back in ancient days. In order to keep the meat and everything hot, she put the soup in a separate pot, with a layer of fat on top as insulation, and then poured the hot soup over the meat and other ingredients upon arrival. It is very tasty and also fun to watch while preparing.

Hao Yang = V V G

This is the patio part of VVG Table, one of the restaurants under the V V G umbrella of a company where I work sometimes. They are pretty expensive but very gourmet.
A change from the normal sitting-around-and-drinking-exotic-hot-teas, I had a frozen lemonade. Final word: tart and sweet at the same time, full of lemony flavor. Tastes as good as it looks.
The green version of the frozen lemonade. This has more mint and cinnamin in it, so it's sweeter but not as lemony.
I didn't actually escape from not having to drink hot tea. At least it was in funky porcelain cups that look like dented mini-beer cups.
They had leftover desserts from brunch from the other VVG restaurant (the one where you can usually find me making hors d'oeuvres), so we got to have them with our afternoon tea. The crunchy stuff up top is caramelized sugar and almond paste..or some other type of nut. The white stuff is mascarapone, a commonly used cheese in desserts, and there were sliced bananas buried in the mascarapone. In short, it was like a modified banana pudding without the vanilla pudding. I think there were some peanuts involved too. It was not mindblowing, but a tasty histamine-triggering bomb for people with food allergies (dairy, peanuts, bananas)

Porridge restaurant.

Paul, former exec for LVMH, behind some steamy dumplings. Tasty.
We got to choose little plates of food to go with our shi-fan (porridge). Guess which one I chose? (only my mom would get this one)

Airplane food

Get crunky with it. The dessert from our return flight from Tokyo to Taipei. Chocolate crackers with Crunch-like chocolate substance sandwiched between.

Bubbly fish

This fish from the little restaurant where we always eat has a bubble. Note the green limey looking things on the side.

My last documented meal in Tokyo

Darling Albert is in Tokyo, working at the US embassy. I had the good fortune of meeting up with him in Roppongi and then going to Shibuya for dinner. We saw some pretty crazy things in Shibuya, among them a concert event at the Shibuya Apple store, a full on amp-and-all street band that was shut down by the authorities, and a very drunk Japanese businessman trying to strangle the metal statue of the faithful dog outside of the Shibuya metro station. Above all, we had a lovely chat on the second floor of what appeared to be an all male bar-cum-eatery. Despite Albert's Japanese-speaking fortitude, we could not figure out what "chicken rice" was. I got it just so I could know what "chicken rice" would refer to. It's like fried rice without the vegetables, add chicken and ketchup. All in all, it wasn't bad, but it certainly was not one of the better meals I've had in Tokyo.
Anybody up for "chicken rice"?
Traditional Japanese rice balls, with salmon hidden on the inside. Very tasty.



Thus ends my massive post. I've been doing this since 10am in the morning and it is now 2pm. Pictures of Taiwanese food soon, when I will have reliable internet with a power source again. Many thanks to VVG, my temporary employers and excellent catering/restaurant/interior designing group, for the massive internet bandwith usage today.

Master Eater no more

I usually consider myself a master eater, equipped with the know-how to face any food that comes my way. However, this meal really had me stumped. Mortar, pestle, sesame seeds and bamboo boat? What? Later, after the fact, we discover this is what you're supposed to do: beat the sesame seeds to a pulp with the mortar and pestle, mix the sesame with two sauces and the mustard that is on the table already, dip your fried pork in the resulting sauce, and eat that all with rice. No word on what to do with the snot looking tofu (that was actually very tasty).
One of the sweeter sauces was for pouring on your cabbage, like a salad dressing.
How to eat this sashimi: take some shredded daikon, couple it with the purple looking seaweed, and then put all that on top of one slice of meat and eat.
This bean and various vegetable salad was sort of gritty. Not that tasty at all.

As Promised

SUSHI FOR BREAKFAST!!! 8am in the morning, Tsukiji Market. Tsukiji market is the biggest fish market ever. Translation: whatever is raw in front of us basically went straight from the ocean to my stomach. What you see here is whatever was left from my constant eating and the constant refilling of the old sushi chef.
Breakfast dessert = shrimp head. So novel, a little cute. I'm sure a bunch of you are gaggy by now, but I took it like a champ and ate everything. I eat RAW FISH for breakfast.

Cheese Bomb Cheese Bomb, You're my Cheese Bomb

...you can give it to me when I need to get it on?

Huge figs

Check out the size of them figs!