What's the food culture in Taipei?

Taipei wakes up eating. By 6:30am, the soy-milk shops are full. Yonghe Dou Jiang Da Wang on Fuxing South Road has been ladling hot dou jiang since the 1950s, when Shandong military veterans set up breakfast stalls in Yonghe district across the river. You'll see office workers standing at the counter eating dan bing, egg crepes rolled with scallion, for 35-45 TWD, and dipping you tiao (fried crullers) into bowls of warm, lightly sweetened soy milk. The steam off the soy pots fogs the front window even in summer. Lunch happens around noon, often a bowl of something from a noodle counter eaten in under 15 minutes. Dinner stretches late. Night markets fire up their grills by 5pm and the best stalls stay lit past midnight. Most locals eat 5 or 6 small meals between 7am and 1am, and the 7-Eleven rice ball at 2am counts as the seventh.

Shilin Night Market is the one every guidebook names first. It's fine, but the basement food court tends toward overpriced tourist portions with English photo menus and higher markups. Raohe Street Night Market, a 2-minute walk from Songshan MRT on the Green Line, is tighter and better. The pepper buns (hu jiao bing) at the entrance stall draw a line 30 people deep by 6pm. The dough blisters against a clay-oven wall, and the pork-and-black-pepper filling is still molten when you bite through. 60 TWD each. Further along the lane, vendors sell medicinal herb ribs soup for 70 TWD in ceramic bowls you return to the counter. Ningxia Night Market, a 10-minute walk from Zhongshan MRT, is where Taipei residents actually eat on weeknights. The oyster omelette stalls here use smaller, sweeter oysters from Dongshi and cook them in a thinner batter than the Shilin version, crisped in lard on a flat iron griddle.

Beef noodle soup is Taipei's defining dish. The city holds an annual beef noodle festival with competition brackets. Yong Kang Beef Noodles on Jinshan South Road has been the benchmark since 1963, serving a soy-braised broth with hand-pulled noodles and beef shank sliced thick. A bowl is 220 TWD. Lin Dong Fang on Bade Road does a spicier, darker version with more chili oil in the base. Both have lunch lines that stretch to the sidewalk. Lu rou fan, braised pork belly over rice, is the other essential. The best versions use skin-on belly simmered in soy, rice wine, five-spice, and fried shallots until the fat is translucent. Jin Feng on Roosevelt Road near Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall charges 40 TWD for a small bowl and it is routinely called the best in the city.

Taipei has excellent vegetarian food rooted in Buddhist temple cuisine. The Miao Kou area near Longshan Temple has multiple vegetarian buffets where you fill a plate and pay by weight, typically 80-120 TWD for a full meal. Look for signs reading su shi. Many night market stalls offer vegetarian versions of standard dishes, including stinky tofu, oyster omelette made with mushroom instead of oyster, and rice noodle soups. The Buddhist restaurants avoid garlic, onion, and leeks in addition to meat. For Western-style vegetarian and vegan food, the Da'an district around Yongkang Street has a growing number of cafés, though prices jump to 250-400 TWD per meal. Celiac visitors should note that soy sauce is in virtually everything and most Taiwanese soy sauce contains wheat.