Eat Away in Taichung City

After checking into our hostel, we wasted no time and went in search for lunch. According to our friendly hosts at Urban Outpost, the streets around the hostel offer some nice food and interesting shops. Armed with the city map and a big appetite, we walked out onto Wenxin Rd 文心路, where our hostel is, and instinctively turned into an alley two blocks away named 大墩六街. Passed by a few nondescript eateries until we saw a corner shop 《上海汪家大水餃》.  We decided to try this one out after confirming with the lady boss that their dumpling soup is not beef-based (mum doesn't take beef). 

                                                 

Coincidentally, we met our hostel hosts who were also at the same shop for lunch! They thought we were really brilliant to know exactly where to find good food. I think we were just lucky. It's a local eatery and we were quite surely the only tourists there. Anyway, this was definitely a good start to our gastronomic adventure in Taiwan. The food is inexpensive, tasty and very local. They have lots more on their menu cum order chit, but we're saving 'space' for the night market later.

 Their specialty 大滷湯餃 - NT65 
These dumplings have special fillings and come in typical 
taiwanese thick soup

Rice with braised pork 滷肉飯 - NT30

Dumpling Noodles 馄饨面 - NT50

Dumpling Soup 馄饨湯 － NT30

We reached Fengjia Night Market 逢甲夜市 at around 4:30pm and most of the stalls were still setting up. Taking our time, we explored the entire length of the market, passing by the entrance of Fengjia University 逢甲大学. Still feeling full from the Starbucks latte we picked up while roaming the city earlier, we didn't get any food even though we were tempted by many. It wasn't until after 6pm that we 'launched our attack' on Fengjia Night Market!

熊食 directly translates as "Bear Food". It serves up unique paw printed buns with a thick slice of tender grilled chicken/pork coated with your choice of sauce. It's a novelty and there was a huge crowd in front of the stall. We waited at least 10 minutes for our order of two buns.

胡椒餅 or pepper meat bun. This tastes a lot better when eaten hot. They make it fresh at the stall.

雞爪冻 is deboned chicken feet served cold. They come in different flavoured seasonings. We picked the spicy one served with pickled vegetables. Though tasty, it was too tough for our liking.

 

86碳烤雞排 has indisputably the longest queue at Fengjia Night Market. A fast-speaking chap took our order (which is simply 'quantity' and 'spicy or non-spicy') and handed us this queue number chit. We waited more than 20 minutes thereafter.