Xiaobei Night Market
The Xiaobei Tourist Night Market in the city center is a medium-sized night market that combines entertainment, leisure, and food. Unlike Taipei and Taichung, which are famous for their night market delicacies, Tainan does not have many night markets! Xiaobei is one of the few night markets in Tainan, where you can enjoy many Tainan snacks such as eel noodles, coffin bread, Anping shrimp rolls, stinky tofu, fish noodles, and more. Besides food, Xiaobei Night Market also features a night market amusement park on the other side, where you can find many childhood trinkets, making it a popular leisure spot for locals in Tainan.
A-Song's Gua Bao is quite famous in Tainan. Gua Bao, originating from Fuzhou, is a snack made by folding a long oval-shaped dough skin to wrap the filling. The traditional fillings usually include slices of pork belly, pickled mustard greens, peanut powder, and cilantro. For health reasons, some people use lean meat instead of pork belly. Due to its shape and filling, it is also known as 'Tiger Bites Pig' in Taiwan. In recent years, some shops in Taiwan have rebranded this traditional food with various fillings, such as chicken fillet, cod fillet, beef, fried egg, and even pig tongue. Because of this, many people also call Gua Bao the 'Taiwanese Hamburger.' The must-try here is the pig tongue Gua Bao, which is not as dry as pure meat and has a bouncy texture. To put it wickedly, it feels like a French kiss! If you haven't tried the pig tongue Gua Bao at A-Song, don't tell me you've eaten A-Song's Gua Bao.
Guohua Street is definitely a must-visit food street in Tainan, with many long-established shops, including Fu Sheng Hao, which has a history of over 70 years. The entire store is mainly made of wood, full of traditional retro style of southern Taiwan. Fu Sheng Hao is famous for its bowl cake, and the store only sells bowl cake and fish soup. Before serving, a special soy sauce is added to the bowl cake, giving it a taste similar to oil paste (in fact, the bowl cake is made from rice paste, with dried shrimp and minced meat added as ingredients). The sweet and salty taste is quite layered, and combined with its chewy texture, it is actually quite delicious.
Director's Tea Egg Chihkan Store
What's so special about tea eggs? If you think that, you're completely wrong. Taiwanese people often joke that mainland Chinese can't afford tea eggs, haha! The Director's tea eggs are filled with rich aroma from the egg white to the yolk, and the tea leaves used to marinate the eggs give them a very strong flavor! Putting aside the joke about mainland Chinese not being able to afford tea eggs, the Director's tea eggs are actually quite good. After listening to the Director, you can go in and have a tea egg and take a break.
Originally run by an elderly couple, their children had no intention of taking over the business as they aged. A lady from Taichung obtained the secret recipe from the elderly couple and continued the business. The shop only sells Angelica lamb, clear soup lamb, lamb offal soup, and white rice. The lamb is freshly slaughtered every day. I particularly recommend the Angelica lamb. The lamb soup here seems to be prepared similarly to Tainan's beef soup, where raw meat is added to boiling soup and then served! Therefore, the Angelica lamb appears slightly pink. If you are afraid of eating raw meat, you can let the lamb soak in the Angelica soup for a bit longer. Typically, when having Angelica lamb in the morning, the shop will ask if you want to pair it with rice. It seems that Taiwanese people have a habit of eating rice for breakfast. Like Ah Cun's beef, it sells out very early every day, so you need to go early.
Dou Nai Zong's business hours are from evening to the next morning. However, the main reason for the recommendation is that their soy milk is very delicious. The soy milk is cooked in water, full of soy aroma, without the burnt taste of soy milk that has been cooked for a long time in general soy milk shops. The iced soy milk is also cooled before being put into the refrigerator, without the hassle of adding ice cubes. Just one cup shows the care of the shop.
This is a local snack shop highly recommended by locals, and the owner is very popular, often appearing on TV shows. The shop has been in business for many years, and the owner insists on personally handling every step of the process to ensure each dish is delicious. The pig heart vermicelli is a specialty here. A Ming typically handles the pig heart by first cutting it into thin strips, placing them into small aluminum cups, adding broth and seasonings, and then cooking them in the original broth using a double-boiling method. Finally, the pig heart is poured into a bowl, topped with broth, sprinkled with shredded ginger, and served hot.
Chihkan Coffin Bread
Coffin Bread was originally named 'Chicken Liver Bread'. In the 1940s, chicken liver and other offal were considered premium ingredients. Therefore, Mr. Liu Yili, who was well-traveled and knowledgeable, used chicken liver as the main filling and named it Chicken Liver Bread. One day, a professor from the affiliated industrial school of Cheng Kung University (the predecessor of National Cheng Kung University) came to the old Chihkan snack shop in Shakaliba Market to taste the Chicken Liver Bread. Everyone praised this food, which resembled Western pastries. While chatting with Mr. Liu Yili, the professor suddenly had an epiphany and said that the Chicken Liver Bread looked like a coffin. Mr. Liu Yili, who was optimistic and cheerful by nature, laughed and said, 'From now on, my Chicken Liver Bread will be named Coffin Bread!' Thus, this somewhat startling name 'Coffin Bread' began to be known as a traditional delicacy of Tainan! As a must-eat snack in Tainan, its homophonic meaning also implies promotion and wealth. Although the name is not pleasant, the taste is excellent!
The owner of Fu Ji Meatball, Jiang Zhuanghui, found the meatballs in Pingtung delicious while serving in the military there, and decided to introduce them to Tainan. After being discharged, he started selling meatballs, but it took him nearly ten years to develop a flavor that satisfied him! The Fu Ji Meatball, improved by Mr. Jiang Zhuanghui, differs somewhat from the Pingtung meatball. The skin of the Pingtung meatball is thicker and the filling consists of small pieces of meat, while the filling of the Fu Ji Meatball is made with a whole piece of meat (traditional Tainan shrimp meatballs use minced meat). The preparation method involves soaking raw meat in sauce, wrapping it in meatball skin, and then steaming it directly (Changhua meatballs are deep-fried). To ensure the larger piece of meat is thoroughly steamed, it takes longer, resulting in a slightly softer meatball skin that retains the meat's aroma!
The noodles in Tainan probably have the most varied flavors in all of Taiwan, and many old shops selling noodles have quite a history. Among them, A-Rui Noodles, which opened in 1923, stands out. The founder, Ye Xie, originally started the business to cater to the large number of people in his family's martial arts school. In the second generation, the business shifted its focus to noodles, and in the third generation, Ye Ruiwen developed a unique flavor that made A-Rui Noodles famous far and wide.
