Where I live in Chiayi County, Taiwan, food is accessible, cheap and insanely delicious. Food is also a huge part of life and culture in Taiwan. Eating dinner out with friends or family, receiving snacks as gifts from co-workers and exploring the local night markets are all common ways that I have engaged with my community through food.
Since there are so many delicious dishes to try in Taiwan, I’ve broken up this field note into the following categories: breakfast, dinner, night markets, and desserts. We’ll still only be skimming the surface of the wildly diverse range of foods you can taste in Taiwan, but this will cover some of the most delicious, most culturally significant, and most outside-of-my-comfort-zone foods that I’ve tried in Taiwan so far.
Taiwanese breakfast is a big dea,l and almost every neighborhood in a Taiwanese city is packed with small breakfast restaurants. For breakfast, I tried danbing (egg crepes) which are a classic breakfast staple. There are many variations of danbing that can include meat, hashbrowns or vegetables. I usually also get a side of scallion pancakes, or pork floss (a popular Taiwanese topping made of dried and shredded pork) and a morning milk tea. Breakfast usually costs around NTD$50, which is around $1.60 US dollars.
