Tiana Eats Taiwan 001

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My love of eating is a well known fact and Taiwan is one of my favorite food destinations. So, as soon as my family booked our tickets for Taiwan, my mom and I decided that we needed to plan out a weekly work out regiment -- in preparation for the copious pounds we would inevitably gain. 

Whenever people ask me what Taiwan is like I explain that it is a fusion of Japan and China, in all regards, including food. Although the population of Taiwan primarily consists of people of Chinese ancestry, Taiwan has a food culture unique to itself. 

7/11

One of the first food items I grab when I go back to Taiwan is Papaya Milk; specifically from 7/11. Among those of you who travel a lot, I'm sure there are those of you who like to try out American businesses in foreign countries. For example, I have a friend Aki who has to go to McDonald's whenever she is traveling, just to see what the foreign menu has to offer. Likewise, I like to go to 7/11 in Taiwan, because the products they offer are completely different from the stores in the States. My favorite Papaya Milk and pudding cups are sold there. I have scoured the Asian markets in the States looking for these exact products, but to no avail. The Papaya Milk in Taiwan is sweet and creamy. The weird thing is I don't even like papaya, but I'm hooked on this drink. 

FRUIT

I actually didn't know this, but Taiwan is famous for its fresh fruit. During the spring season, the fruit is especially sweet. Fruit markets tend to open early in the morning (~6:00 AM) and since our red eye flight had landed in Taiwan at approximately that hour we directed our taxi driver to first bring us to the fruit market before bringing us to our the hotel. Unlike in New York City, Taipei offers a variety of tropical fruits. Among my family's favorites are cherimoya, wax apples, and guava. There are many other fruits too such as mango, papaya, and pineapple which are significantly sweeter in Taiwan than they are in New York. When I first ate the pineapple in Taiwan I was shocked to find no sourness at all. I can now see how pineapple cakes came to be one of the most popular Taiwanese treats.

After visiting Taiwan this time, wax apples are one of my new favorite fruit. They're called wax apples because of its waxy skin. At first I was kind of dissuaded by the idea of a fruit with a wax skin, but it actually didn't detract from the taste of it at all. The inside is crunchy and the texture kind of reminds me more of a pear than an apple. You can also eat almost the entire fruit since there is no hard core in the center of it. My brother advised me not to eat the butt of the fruit though, because it was kind of dirty. I ate it anyway.

My parents and brother's favorite fruit was cherimoya. I had never heard of cherimoya previous to my visit, but my parents and brother were already familiar with the fruit because they had eaten a lot of it when they went to Hawaii. The fruit kind of resembles a dragon egg from Game of Thrones or Buddha's head. When you eat it, each bite of the fruit has a pit in it that you spit out. The softer the fruit, the more ripe it is. I wasn't a fan of the cherimoya, but then my brother introduced me to the cherimoya pineapple hybrid fruit. After a bit of Googling, I found out the fruit is called an atemoya. The atemoya is a hybrid of the sugar-apple and a cherimoya. According to Wikipedia, the resulting taste is reminiscent of a pina colada, which I actually find to be pretty accurate. So if you like pina coladas and have access to these sorts of tropical fruits, I would definitely recommend trying it out.

BREAKFAST

Whenever we're in Taiwan my mom always makes sure to bring us to have a traditional Taiwanese breakfast. Most of our hotels included a breakfast buffet, but our first morning there after landing we didn't have access to the buffet so we took full advantage of that opportunity to go out and find a traditional Taiwanese breakfast store. Fortunately, the concierge knew of a good local breakfast shop nearby our hotel so we went out to look for it. The best part of these sort of shops is no matter how much you order, you will probably never spend over $10 USD. My mom, brother, sister and I ate to our hearts content for approximately $4 USD. 

A traditional Taiwanese breakfast is youtiao 油條 and soy milk. Youtiao are fried breadsticks and you stick them into your soy milk and then eat them. People eat their rice porridge with pieces of youtiao in it, or even eat it wrapped in a sesame pancake. The options are endless. 

I'm going to discuss places to eat in Taipei and Taiwanese night markets in another post, so look out for that!