Eating out in Taipei

Eating out in Taipei is easy and is mostly cheap. If you want to have a fancy dinner instead, you will find that as well. That is why it is so good with such variations and choices in Taipei.
This is not a food blog, so I will not blog about food or restaurants in detail.

Yes, in Taipei, you don't have to worry about being hungry. Wherever you go, you will find something to satisfy your stomach.

In general, I feel that Taiwan is influenced by Japanese food a lot. It's everywhere. You can of course find pasta, Hong Kong food, Korean food and their local food too. However, European food is more difficult to find.

I might not know much about Taiwanese food, but I notice that almost everywhere you can find Paigufan (pork chops rice), Jituifan (chicken club rice) and NiuRouMian (Beef Noodles). This has then given me the impression that Taiwanese food is Paigufan, Jituifan and Beef Noodles.

When it comes to deserts, tian tang is very popular in Taiwan. It's some kind of sweet soup.
Hong Kong style Dim Sum is also a very popular choice here.
For lunch, a popular meal is the Lunchbox - so called Bin Dang. Easy, cheap and often delicious.

During lunch, I eat around my office, which is near Guang Fu Bei Lu.
I pay around 100NTD for a lunch, which is less than one third of what I pay for a lunch in Sweden.

I have some favorite lunch restaurants of course, but after being there for a year, I got bored of them still. My favorites are the one with steamed dumpling (best in town), the chicken rice called Ji Rou Fan, and the teppanyaki.

When it comes to dinner, we have plenty of choices around the city. I can't name them all and I haven't tried them all either. I will just briefly go thru some.

Pho Hoa - Near Sogo in Zhongxiao Fuxing. One of our favorite restaurants. It's small with a small menu, but their pho is very delicious.
Din Tai Fung - Quite expensive and award-winning Taiwanese chain. Their dumplings are very famous.
Plum Blossom Room at Brother Hotel - Located on the Nanjing E Rd. Dim sum here is good and I like the old-style when they walk around with their carts.
City Star (Jing Xing) - 24H HK style restaurant. Long waiting time, but quite nice food.
How Fun - We found this in Zhongxiao Dunhua. Paella and other latin american influenced food. Not bad.
Calcutta Restaurant - This place in the basement of Ximending Wan Nian Plaza. Delicious Indian food.
Long Du Restaurant - Near Zhongshan Rd, which is near around apartment. Best Beijing duck in town. Must try! Book in advance!
Kai Fun - A chain with great Sichuan food. Can highly recommend.
Emporer Food - Chain with very delicious paigufan.
Lao Wang Ji Beef Noodles - Probably the best beef noodles in town. Our favorite beef noodles restaurant ever. The beef is really tender! You can find this one in Ximen.
Si Hai Yi Jia - One of my favorite business lunch restaurant, because it is really delicious. You pay just 120NTD!
Bao Wu Japanese Restaurant - A small cozy Japanese restaurant only in Shilin station. Very delicious food.
Mushroom Forest - In Chang An W Rd. Nice pasta. Big portions.
Mita - Pasta chain. Nice pasta.
TJB - A chain with delicious pasta and other nice food.
Saizeriya - Japanese chain. One of the cheapest places for pasta, pizza or steak. Cheap doesn't mean it is bad. Actually, it is quite nice quality here, especially the pizzas.
Ippudo - Japanese chain. Their ramen is delicious, but menu has changed a bit.
Hokkaido Ramen Santouka - Japanese chain. Their ramen is not bad, but quite expensive.
Watami - Japanese chain with a big menu. Relatively expensive though.
Yoshinoya - Japanese fast food chain with nice rice bowls.
Ba Fang Yin Ji - A very cheap dumpling chain. You can have them cooked or fried. Very yummy.
Thai Town - An expensive Thai food chain. Delicious though!
Ootoya - Japanese chain with decent food.
Coco Curry House - Japanese chain specialized in curry meals.
McDonald's - Comparing to other western countries, hamburger meals here are cheap. We went there just a couple of times. Why having this kind of food when you can find delicious Asian food here?
MOS Burger - Japanese fast food chain selling burgers. However, we didn't like it. Quality is poor.
Oldie Burger - Next to our apartment building. Very expensive burgers, but delicious.


Some other things worth mentioning:
Food courts - In every mall or department store, you can find food courts with quite OK quality. The price of a set meal is around 150NTD.

Night markets - Shilin, Raohe and Ningxia are the night markets worth mentioning. You can find lots of snacks, drinks and other food here. However, we find them quite greasy and we don't know where the oil came from considering the oil scandal here.

Att 4 Fun in Xinyi - They renovated the eating floor during autumn 2014. Lots of nice and cozy coffee shops. Some of them serving meals. Nice place with decorations of Alice in Wonderland.

Bakeries - There are lots of bakeries in Taipei. It is so convenient to just walk in a buy a bun if you feel like it. After coming to Taipei, and when we travelled to other places in Asia, I really miss the Taiwan bakeries by the time I feel for something sweet. One of the most popular is ChiaTe, which only has one store and it is located on Nanjing E Rd. This store is so popular that people have to line up to go in to the store. Their cakes and other stuff are very delicious at a good price. Tourists from other Asian countries stop by to buy bags of cakes to bring home as gifts.

Bubble tea - You can basically find bubble tea bars everywhere. Whenever I'm away from Taipei, and I feel for a bubble tea immediately, I wish I was in Taipei at that moment instead. There are lots of chains, but I find Come Buy as one of the best.

Teppanyaki - This is quite easy to find and it is cheap. There is one big chain serving for around 130NTD. At night markets, you get two choices of meat for around 250NTD. I like this kind of food.

Hot pots - Hot pots and sukiyaki seem very popular in Taiwan. You can find it everywhere at a nice price. Momo Paradise is one of the chains we have tried.

Grill - You can find lots of all-you-eat places for around 500NTD. It's often very Korean influenced.

Cafés - We have been here for a year, but we only paid a visit to Starbucks once. There are Starbucks everywhere, but we don't find them very interesting. Too pricey and average quality. We rather walk around to find more local coffee shops. For instance, behind Mitsukoshi in Zhongshan are quite many nice coffee shops. In Zhongxiao Dunhua, you can also find many nice ones.
We have brought our books to have some desserts and teas. I recommend reading and eating, I think it's relaxing and a cozy activity.

Final words: I know that, when we move back home, food in Taipei is one of the things we will miss the most for sure. Of course we often miss Western food, but I like the variety of food here much more. One more thing is that I need something lean and clean most of the time. In Taiwan, the food is quite oily and sweet all the time. Therefore, we cook at home 1-3 times a week to avoid unhealthy food. However, we have enjoyed eating out a lot!