The tastes of Taipei

Halfway down Yongkang Street, in central Taipei, a trio of women fry up zhua bing (gorgeous shreddy circles of hot pastry studded with spring onion) and serve them fresh from the griddle.

Opposite, teenagers perch on stools outside a snack bar slurping “mango avalanches” and “strawberry blizzards” – piles of juicy fruit over shaved ice that take the edge off the sultry tropical heat. It’s hard to walk more than a few paces along this street, or indeed much of Taipei, without succumbing to gastronomic temptation.

Taiwan’s eating habits have been shaped by a history of settlement, colonisation and immigration. Once populated by indigenous tribes, it was settled by immigrants from Fujian province in the 15th century and later by Hakka people. Portuguese sailors dropped by in the 16th century and the island was colonised in subsequent centuries by the Dutch, Spanish and Japanese. In 1949, at the end of the Chinese civil war, Chiang Kai-shek and his defeated Nationalist army took some of China’s most accomplished chefs with them when they fled to Taiwan.

These days, Taipei is a melting pot of regional Chinese cuisines, with a bias towards the refined cooking of Shanghai and the mainland’s eastern seaboard. Most famously, the international Din Tai Fung chain, originally a family business, specialises in what Westerners call Shanghai soup dumplings and locals xiao long, which it has raised to previously undreamt-of levels of perfection.

Pick up one of the twirly dumplings, rupture its side with a chopstick and let the exquisite juices flow on to your spoon before you bite in.

For more formal Shanghainese dining, Feng Chao-lin’s Small Shanghai Restaurant has a cult following among local gourmets. Here, a banquet might include crucian carp braised with spring onion, pork belly slow-cooked with fermented bean curd or crisp stir-fried shrimp. And the tiny and unassuming Sanfen Suqi, a favourite of local food-writer Chu Chen-fan, offers slices of juicy pork neck with a dip of soy sauce, garlic and chilli, a mesmerising version of a Sichuanese classic, as well as “dry-fried” fish, which is a delicious mix of golden crispness, tender flesh and peppery fragrance.

For a strictly local culinary style, try the Ningxia night market, where you can perch at a makeshift table and scoff a bowl of rice covered in a lazy stew of spiced pork belly, a skewer of grilled mullet roe with garlic and radish, or an oyster omelette. Some restaurants take market food indoors, such as Du Hsiao Yeh on Yongkang Street, where you can eat a bowl of “slack season” noodles topped with a rich pork sauce, mashed garlic and a prawn.