Taipei’s beef noodle restaurants take on US and Japanese fast food
Restaurants in Taipei are putting new twists on the popular Taiwanese beef noodle soup to combat diners’ growing appetite for burgers and Japanese rice bowls
Taiwanese beef noodle soup is world famous, appreciated for its deeply flavoured, rich broth, and long-simmered, tender meat. People in Taiwan have been eating basic versions of this dish for as long as anyone can remember.
But over the past couple of decades, Taiwanese beef lovers have started turning towards American hamburgers and Japanese rice bowls. That trend has prompted beef noodle chefs to create new recipes to keep customers from straying too far into foreign territory.
They are using top cuts of meat or tossing in a salad’s worth of vegetables, for example,to help Taiwan’s beef bowls stand out among similar renditions of the cheap, filling versions that are eaten in many other parts of East Asia.
“Beef noodle soup still has the advantages of tradition and ubiquity,” says Matt Gross, a New York-based food critic who has sampled the noodles of Taipei. Competition, he says, “is coming from cooks and restaurateurs who, because Taiwan is increasingly a forward-thinking, internationally connected country, feel they have the freedom to experiment.”
Two Taipei restaurants, 186 Beef Noodles and Niu Baba, serve the dish, and their versions couldn’t be more different.
