Exploring the numerous Taipei dining options is a big task. Thousands of restaurants, food carts, and street vendors offer nearly every dish from across the globe, making it possible to have a hamburger, hummus, and haggis all in the same day.
Buy we are in Asia, so let’s feast Asian style!
Here are 3 more great meals we’ve shared in Taipei
Budget Meal
Dumplings are a staple of Chinese cuisine. These delightful creations are a mix of diced meat and vegetables, wrapped in a thin skin of wheat dough, which is then boiled, steamed, or fried. A nearby restaurant, Zhou Pang Zi (周胖子), makes a great dumpling
Often, dumplings are served with small side dishes and a hot and sour soup.
Zhou Pang Zi (周胖子) also serves a wonderful flaky bun filled with slow cooked beef, known as a shao bing (燒餅). This thing literally melts in your mouth and is my personal reason for returning to this restaurant
The bill for 2 people who ate too much:
15 dumplings (10 pork, 5 beef): 120 TWD ($4 or ~$0.25 each)
Shao Bing stuffed with beef: 60 TWD ($2)
Hot and Sour Soup for two: 50 TWD ($1.67)Tofu, Egg, and Seaweed side dish: 50 TWD ($1.67)
Total bill: 280 TWD (~$9.33) – about $4.75 per person
Midrange Meal
Shabu Shabu is the sound this great dinner makes as it simmers and boils in front of you. This meal not only tastes great, it is an experience. Qi Min is our favorite place to get this dish, which is the front end of an organic farm that raises a wide variety of vegetables, grass-fed cows and sheep, and forest raised pigs. They also offer home delivery of all of their bounty at reasonable prices
Sitting side by side with your fellow diners in front of a personal cooking surface, you prepare the finest of ingredients, typically a mix of in season vegetables and thinly slice raw meat or seafood. These are cooked in a small pot filled with a miso or tomato base soup.
Just a few seconds of simmering and the beef or pork is ready to savor. Having raw meat in front of you might seem odd to Westerners, but give it a try. It doesn’t get more fresh that this!
The bill for 2 people:
2 orders of vegetables and meat: 588 TWD ($19.60) – About $10/person
Living Large
Taiwan dining is heavily influenced by the years of Japanese control of the island, and Teppanyaki restaurants are a big part of that
A chain of them called Chamonix is a pretty swanky place with a French twist, offering wonderful things like ribeye steak with foie gras and duck breast cooked in apple brandy
A set meal here consists of 7 courses with appetizers, soup, salad, fried rice, beverages, and dessert. For fun it is prepared to order in front of you on a giant cooking surface. Service is outstanding. We went once with my Chinese class, and one of my classmates said, “I feel like a princess!”
It is a lot of food, so it is a good idea to exercise some self restraint or there will be no room for dessert
Before going, be sure to check out their website and get yourself a 10% off coupon :)
Total bill for 4 people:
4 set meals: 4120 TWD + 10% service charge – 10% off coupon = 4120 TWD (~137) About $35/person
It’s been a great few months of exploring the Taipei food scene. We still have some time here and will continue to explore.
Have you had a great dining experience in Taipei that you would like to recommend? Please share in the comments. And why not consider sharing this post on Facebook or Twitter?
Happy Travels and Happy Dining
Jeremy and Winnie, Go Curry Cracker!
Furiously taking notes.
As usual, to me, the budget option looks the most delectable.
Thanks for this post.
AZ
The dumplings are a good choice :-D
Food looks great and tasty. What about safety, is it safe enough for foreigners to visit? Can you get by with English only? What a great life you guys have at a such young age. I envy you guys.
It might be a little more dangerous than a toddler’s petting zoo, but not by much
English only works almost anywhere, I think. Just don’t expect deep conversations
Wow, those dishes look amazing. And the prices are more amazing! I’m partial to the relatively simple budget choices, but maybe that’s because I’m most familiar with those dishes (or the Americanized versions we get in most places here).
I was curious about the taxes and tipping customs there in Taiwan. I see a 10% service fee at the Teppanyaki place, but is a 10% tip customary elsewhere? And do they add tax on top of the food prices? We had a bit of sticker shock while visiting Canada where tax was 15%+ in Quebec province (so a $7 quite bite to eat was instantly $8 plus tip, or close to $10).
There is no tipping. All restaurants include a 10% service charge and any taxes are already included in the prices. So basically you pay the listed price
Sounds like a better system than here in the States. I’m just used to marking up anything I order at a restaurant by 25% or so to account for taxes and tip. But having the WYSIWYG price is so much simpler.
The United States has a lot of bizarre pricing practices
Seriously, how do I pay for 1 gallon of gas that costs $3.995? I’ve never even seen a half cent coin
I saw prices like $1.427 or $1.424 per liter in Canada. I guess they figure you’re buying a few dozen liters (or a dozen gallons in the US) so the fractional penny can add up to a few cents of extra profit.
I also noticed that canada dropped the penny completely. Now they round to the nearest $0.05. The receipt even shows “rounding” of $0.02 or whatever.
Eating out in Taiwan can be dirt cheap or can be really expensive. It really depends on which type of restaurant you go. All the food pictures that you posted look yummy!