The famous Durian. As big as your head, smells like corpses, and tastes worse.
A typical lunch. Pork noodle soup with a spiced egg, sausage, greens, chicken, and fried fish.
A typical restaurant. A lot of places to eat are either small stands with tables near by or something like this, where the front room of the house is the business and the family lives upstairs and in the back.
This is in a more indoor restaurant but it still has a street feel to it. My dad's friend owns this. There was a ton of food and what you see here is only the second half of the meal.
This is a more western style restaurant. Indoors, menus, uniforms for waiters, etc... This was salmon-don (I forget the real name) and shrimp tempura. It was delicious.
Taiwan also has great tea. We went up to Alishan mountain park to visit family that owned a tea farm, and got treated to the best of the best. The way to prepare Taiwanese tea is a little more complicated than the Western version of dip in a bag and pour. You put boiling water in the little clay pot, which is full to the brim with tea leaves, then pour the tea into the glass pitcher until there is enough to serve everyone. Tea cups are only a few sips. The host is constantly working to keep the cups full.
Octopus and squid are common menu items and street vendor snacks. They are delicious!
I'm going to cheat an use a photo from my last visit now to show you guys the vendor food. It's the most delicious stuff on earth and I'm missing it already.
This is just one sort of cart food. There are tons of options from everything to fresh fruit to steamed buns to cow tongue.
