Taiwan — Night market @Shida (3)

Mu Ding Japanese-style ice shaving store (木町日式冰店)

 

Mu Ding is a dessert store which mainly provides Japanese-style ice shaving. The owner specially brings the syrup from Japan back to Taiwan.

Green tea ice shaving — This is her popular ice shaving. The owner uses the Japanese green tea powder to make jellies, tangyuan, ice-cream. Then serve with red bean and the Japanese syrup. I think their red beans do not dip in sweet-water before, thus all the red beans are not that sweet.

Hawaiian ice shaving – This ice shaving is serving with vanilla ice cream, soda, and four different seasonally fruits. It is not a colorful ice shaving, but also suitable to have it in summer. And it’s healthier than other ice shaving since it does not serve with too much syrup.

Sweet soup with white fungus and lotus nuts – If you do not want to have the cold ice shaving during winter, Mu Ding provides some hot Chinese dessert. This hot tong sui contains white fungus (tremella fuciformis) and lotus nuts which is really healthy and nourishing.

Black glutinous rice – This is one of the desserts that the owner highly recommended. Rich flavors of coconut tong sui and combine with sweet black glutinous rice.

Japanese rice dishes (Japanese: rice dish = “donburi/don” 丼) – The dessert store not only provide Japanese ice shaving, but also some Japanese rice and noodle dishes for customers. Such as fried pork rice dish (pork don), eel don, udon, etc. These dishes attract a lot of Taiwanese students.

 

Address: No.50, Longcyuan St., Da-an District, Taipei City 10645, Taiwan (R.O.C.) [next to Lantern Lou Mei] Tel: 02-3365-1680; Service hours: Mon-Sun 11:30-23:30

Tai-one dessert store (臺一牛奶大王)

 

Tai-one is one of the dessert stores in Shida night market that provide tang yuan. They have different kinds of tang yuan, included both sweet and salt flavors. They also provide ice shaving, but not as famous as Mu Ding.

Red bean soup with tang yuan

Tang yuan with sweet peanut tong sui

Salt flavor’s tang yuan

Ice shaving with chocolate and pudding

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Taiwan – Night market @Shida (2)

 Yaki (車輪蛋糕)

Yaki actually is a Japanese dessert called imagawayaki. In Japan, there are various shapes of the yaki, mainly are depended on the culture of that places.This cake is kind of like cream puff. There are several ingredients of the yaki, the most common is cream butter. They also provide red bean, taro, etc.The size of each yaki is not very big. Thus you are able to have other delicious foods in the night market.

 Candy Apple

Like traditional American candy apple, this store also use green apple and serve caramel outside the apple. Firstly, they will use vinegar and salt water to soak for three hours, in order to keep the nutrition of the apple’s skin. Also it can remove the wax outside the apple and maintain the crispy texture of the apple’s skin. They also provide over 20 flavors of candy apple, such as with strawberries, cotton candy, chocolate bean, gummi bear, oatmeal, etc. Because of the colorful candy apples attract a lot of people.

 Candy apple with fruit hard candies

 Candy apple with oatmeal, honey, and almond

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Taiwan – Danshuei (3)

 Crispy fried Taro

Inside the crispy fried taro is mashed taro and with some grainy taro. Thus it’s the texture of food. Since eat too much taro is not good for the stomach, mashed taro is easier to digest.Because it is fried, so there is a paper wrapped in order to absorb the oil. However, the fried taro is kind of long, I think it can serve two people, otherwise you will be so full and not able to have other snacks.

Address:  Jhongshan Rd.(the cross-section of Cingshuei St.), Danshuei Township, Taipei County 25174, Taiwan (R.O.C.)

Business Hours: Monday – Sunday — PM:15:00~PM:21:00

 Doufuhua 

This store opened since 1976 in Danshuei. They provided really smooth doufuhua. In summer, they will provide cold doufuhua, and hot one in winter, thus people are able to have doufuhua in four seasons.They have 4 flavors of doufuhua is popular, original, pudding, chocolate, and almond. Their syrup is unique.

The other special thing of their store is they will mix other Chinese desserts with the doufuhua, such as mung bean soup, tangyuan, peanut, etc. Also they will mix raisin and chocolate jam.

Address: No.9, Lane 21, Yingjhuan Rd., Danshuei Township, Taipei County 25174, Taiwan (R.O.C.) Tel: 02-2622-7936

  

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Taiwan — Black As Chocolate

Happy Valentine’s Day! Wish all couples are sweet as chocolate~

 

  Black As Chocolate

Black As Chocolate (the pioneer name is Awfully Chocolate) is opened by a Taiwanese actress, Stella Wong. Due to the legal issues, she changed the name of her shop. Stella used the color of black and white as the main color of her dessert shop. Although without the best looking of the cake (generally compared with all other desserts, the look of her cakes are not quite good looking), every dessert is able to give you a surprise. All the desserts are only 6 inches, which is not really big. So people are able to have different cakes at a time.Her desserts divided into 3 categories, a tease, a rush, and overkill.

 

1) A Tease:

 

 Chocolate Cheese Cake – I am fans of cheese cake, I love any kind of cheese cakes. The sponge cake is chocolate flavor, with the cheese that from Australia. The cheese is a little bit sour, so when it served with chocolate, the cake does not taste really sweet at all. In between the two layer of cheese there is chocolate cream as well. On the top of the cake have some broken pieces of biscuits which taste like oreo.

 Strawberry Chocolate Dip –  A sweet strawberry with a thick dip of chocolate outside. Every box has 6 strawberries. Well, this one is not really special, since everyone is able to make it at home.

2) A Rush:

 Blackcurrant and strawberry chocolate cake – With a thick chocolate cream on the top, and the sour blackcurrant cream inside create a match of the whole cake. Every bite will have a slide strawberry that drive people crazy.

 Mango and Passion fruit chocolate cake – In between the cake is mango meat. Every bite you can taste a strong flavor of mango.

3) An Overkill: 

 Classical chocolate cake – With 70% of Belgium Royal dark chocolate, a little bit bitter but with the chocolate sponge cake become my second favorite. If you like chocolate very much, you must try this one.

 

 Raspberry tart – If you like sour food, you must try this one.

  Hazelnut chocolate cake –  3 layers of sponge cake and full with hazelnuts inside.  

 

Every box have a unique paper inside which is a story of each dessert that create by Stella.

 

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Taiwan — King Join

 King Join Royal Vegetarian Restaurant (京兆尹)

King Join is a restaurant that having vegetable dishes. For me, I think every vegetable dish is pretty much the same. So I can’t say they are really delicious or what, but at least not bad. However, the famous foods in King Join are desserts, such as different kinds of pastries, and their most famous dessert is the Chinese Almond yogurt. The decorations of King Join are built like Chinese palace. All the waitresses dressed in traditional Chinese clothes with make-up. Their services are somehow surprise you that you feel like you are in a palace.

All the foods in King Join, included desserts, are advocated for healthy. It is because they have another label which is “the imperial kitchen,” they will provide foods like in the Chinese palace.

 “Chinese Almond Yogurt” — The Almond yogurt is served in a pot with some dry ice. The texture of the yogurt is really smooth and soft, with a strong flavor of almond.

 “Rolling of Donkey” – This is a bean flour pastry. They outer layer is covered by dark yellow bean flour, which have a great fragrant. The texture is chewy and soft. The reason that this dessert called the rolling donkey is because in the past most of the donkeys have to work by transporting the commodities, thus they have to walk across the desert. Afterward, their body is full with sand. Similar to this dessert that full with yellow flour, as a result it’s named as the “rolling of donkey.”

 Hawthorn pastry – I like the taste of hawthorn very much, so this is one of my favorite desserts too. Hawthorn contains sour taste, and is able to dissolve oily foods and encourage digestion. Therefore it is a good dessert after you have the main course.  Slide Chinese carrot sesame bun – A strong taste of Chinese carrot. I do not like Chinese carrot very much, since sometime I can taste the raw smell of it. However, this one does not contain any raw smell. With the sesame outside, it doesn’t taste oily as well.

Futhermore, the mung bean pastry is another popular dessert in King Join. The most important is this pastry does not taste really sweet. It will melt slowly when you put it in your mouth, thus the taste of the mung bean is full in your mouth.

King Join also provided various kinds of hot and healthy desserts, such as dumpling soup, raw rice congee, lotus congee, black sesame congee, etc.

Most of their desserts are really delicious and full of the traditional characteristics.

Address: No.18, Sihwei Rd. Da-an District, Taipei City 10691, Taiwan (R.O.C.) Tel: 02-2701-3225

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Taiwan — Crepe

  Very Paris (非常巴黎可麗餅)

The first crepe’s shop was opened in 1997. The boss, Mr. Pang, said that because one of his friends from America wants to have the French crepe when he visited Taiwan, thus he imagined groundlessly and created the crepe for his friend. Due to this first creation, Mr. Pang opened his crepe’s shop.

 Taiwanese Crepe (可麗餅)

French Crepe VS Taiwanese Crepe

French Crepe

Crepe is thin as paper

Include both sweet and salty ingredients in a crepe(Salty ingredients are more general)

Served with cream/butter, onion, cheese, jam sauce, and herb

The special of French Crepe is adding Rum in the flour, so the crepe is full with the flavor of Rum

 Taiwanese Crepe

 Crepe is a little bit crispy

2 kinds: Sweet flavor and Salty flavor

Sweet: include jam such as strawberry, peanut, cream of fruit, chocolate, soufflé, etc.

Salty: include beef, or chicken, or seafood such as tuna salad, salmon, etc

Actually, there are different kinds of crepes in various countries, such as Japan. However, the Taiwanese crepe is the only one that has so many ingredients in one crepe.

  The popular flavours in Very Paris are black pepper beef, smoked chicken, Hawaiian seafood, Thailand lemon chicken.

 However, I think that the sweet taste is better than the salty one. Since the crepe is sweet, so it’s kind of taste weird that with the salty ingredients. And the most important thing is I believed that this snack is a dessert, it’s hard to imagine that a dessert is taste salty. ??!! Well…or it’s only me that can’t stand for it.

If you want to try this kind of crepe, I remember that there is one little shop in West Edmonton Mall’s food court. I can’t remember what the name is, but that shore has sold the sweet crepe. The second one is a little dessert’s shore in Lethbrdige called “Yo-Yo”, which near Park Place Mall. Nevertheless, for sure, don’t imagine that they are selling the same crepe as in Taiwan, those crepes in Taiwan are way better than these 2 stores.

Address:

“Very Paris”: A6, No.69, Wunhua Rd. Situn District, Taichung City 40742, Taiwan (R.O.C.). Tel: 09-2831-3327

“Yo-Yo”: 102, 5 Street South, Lethbridge, AB, T1J 2B2. Tel: 403-320-9667

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