Restaurants blogging from other cities continues on. Jon and I spent 8 days in Taipei on the first week of January. The last time I went to Taipei was when I was a child (10-11 years old or so?). My memory of Taipei was foggy and all I remembered was the bad traffic and ugly cityscape. Now I have a whole new impression on Taipei from this trip and I end up liking this very underrated city a whole lot. Taipei has an interesting culinary scene, it’s known for cheap eat, street food, night market, boba drinks, slush ice…it’s not exactly known for gourmet cuisine. However we did manage to eat very well: from cheap to not-so-cheap, from street corner to a beautiful colonial-era Japanese house up on the mountain surrounded by beautiful scenery.
Since Taiwan isn’t on most Westerners’s travel radar so there’s not much information in the English other than Lonely Planet guide and it’s not very good. I ended up doing most of my research from the internet (there’re lots of Taiwan food blogs) and from Japanese guides (apparently Taiwan is one of the top travel destinations for Japanese).
Read about Ya Rou Bian (Duck meat slice), a cheap eatery at Ximending specialized in goose meat that’s been around for 50 years. They pride themselves for not having other outlets in the country. The first floor was packed but there’s a spacious second floor with lots of tables. Their menu is very small, there’s only one kind of noodle and their main dish is the goose meat plate which comes with the choice of small or large.
Both of us got a bowl of rice noodle (NT 50,about $1.50) . The rice noodle soup came with two slices of the goose meat and the broth was standard Taiwanese flavor, which is light and green onion tasting.
We got the small goose plate (NT 150, about $4.60). The goose slices were pretty tasty. The meat was tender and was a little bit gamier than duck. Though I still prefer the taste and texture of Hong Kong style roasted goose more (with the crispy skin and plum sauce), however, Ya Rou Bian’s goose manage to be not oily at all, unlike most HK’s roasted goose, so that’s a big plus.
A good start for our Taipei trip. Though I’d like to know why the place is called “duck meat slice” instead of “goose meat slice”?
Ya Rou Bian (鸭肉扁)
No.98-2 Yi Section,Zhonghua Road, Taipei, Taiwan
haha, does that read “take your own spoon”?
the goose meat noodle looks sooooo good!!
looks like a nice, down to earth place ^0^
Haha yes, it was a very DIY place.
Ya is duck not goose