we're in Tainan, Taiwan this place is a street food paradise and today we're
going on a huge hunt to find the best noodles that Tainan has to offer
Tainan is a noodle paradise we're food hunting here to bring you the best and
most unique bowls of noodles you've ever seen, watch out for the freshest squid
noodles,Tainan's famous Danzai noodles, noodles made entirely out of fish and
the only bowl of noodles we've eaten that could kill us, get ready for some
mouth-watering food
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate, we hope
you're hungry, let's eat!
first stop is for a bowl of squid and rice noodle soup and check out the line
behind me there are so many people in the queue so let's go and join them
we've got our bowl of rice noodle squid soup and look at it, it looks so good now
this looks super simple as well just a clear broth, a little bit of celery, some
blanched or boiled squid on top, nice big chunks of that and a round rice noodle
this place is ridiculously busy there are so many people lined up and we got
here right when it opened and the queue was probably already 30 or 40 people at
that point, just gonna try a little bit of this clear broth to start
really simple doesn't have much squid flavor I was expecting a squid flavor
it's quite sweet it's got a little taste of that celery that they've put on the top
really, really simple, let's just go for, actually what there is
here is some sauces so we've got two sauces I think this might be a chilli
sauce by the looks of it quite thick and probably just a soy so let's put those
in and dunk this squid in those, I'll get a whole lot of chilli sauce
squid and some noodles
it's like a fermented chilli sauce maybe a fermented bean in there that's really
good, the squid's actually a little bit chewy
I was expecting it to be much softer and more tender but it's got a lot of bite
and chew to it but it's still really easy to eat
I've got to go for just noodles cause they're an awesome texture these rice noodles you get a lot
of them too, look at that, covered in that clean broth
super simple again it's covered in that sort of sweet broth but they're not
super gluggy from being in that broth so they're sitting in that giant wok just
wallowing in all the soup but they're not super gluggy and overcooked it's
really nice, but this is the first dish of the day
super simple, great way to start, I think from here it's definitely on to more bold
flavours though
this Tainan noodle hunt continues and next up we're having one of Tainan's
most famous noodles these are Danzai, noodles we're gonna grab them right over
there
check out this beautiful bowl of Danzai noodles it's made up of a tonne of
different ingredients so let me talk you through what we've got so we've got some
noodles hiding down the bottom there they're swimming in a beautiful prawn
head broth, there's some minced pork, minced braised pork on the top there some
poached shrimp, a meatball, an iron egg and then tonnes of coriander and this dish
is called Danzai noodles which translates to Peddlers Pole noodles and it has
a bit of a history so it was invented by a fisherman in 1895 and he needed to
make some money during the typhoon season when he couldn't go out to fish
and so he peddled these noodles and he used to walk around the temples of
Tainan and he would carry the ingredients in two buckets suspended on a
pole along his shoulders and that's how they became known as Peddler's Pole noodles
but let's get eating this bowl of noodles looks really incredible so I'm
gonna get some of those noodles, bit of that minced pork hopefully will stick
onto them, all right, oh I've got some bean sprouts too
mmmmmm
ohhh
those noodles are the perfect texture
still have a bit of bite, they're a wheat noodles and
there's a crunch from those beansprouts I'm gonna get some of that minced pork
and that broth, because the flavour of the broth stuck to the noodles a bit
and ohhhhh it was really good
ohhhhh man
there is so much flavour in that broth, it's really intense so what they do is
they stew prawn heads for hours and hours and make it into this stock and it's got
a really sweet seafood flavour, I want to get into this iron egg, so iron eggs are a
Taiwanese specialty and what they do is they take and egg and then they stew it
in heaps of spices and soy and then they air dry it and then it becomes like
shrunken and almost chewy so let's just give it a taste
mmmm it's got a really intense egg flavour and you can sort of taste the herbs and
the spices that it's been stewing in and the white here is quite chewy
and quite springy, it's got a lot of texture, I'm gonna go for some more of
these noodles actually get more of that minced pork on there, alright
mmm, hmm and some of this prawn as well, mmmm
oh this is such an epic bowl it's like one big bowl of flavour there is so much
texture going on as well so that chewy iron egg, that poached prawn is really
crisp still, crunch of the bea sprouts and the freshness of the coriander and
those noodles just sort of slurp right up but the hero of the dish is that broth it is
so infused with that prawn head flavour and it just like binds everything
together and just creates this epic bowl of deliciousness
I'm really excited about the next bowl of noodles, the noodles themselves are
made out of fish so let's go and get a bowl
I've got my bowl of fish noodles in front of me and they look so interesting so the
noodles here these beige-y grey coloured noodles are actually made out of fish paste
which is so interesting and she put them together or put the dish together
pretty quickly she just popped a bunch of noodles into a strainer together
with some minced pork, added some lettuce and gave it a quick toss in a big pot
of broth so that it warmed through and cooked very quickly, popped it into a bowl and
then topped it with a bit of pepper, some seaweed and then also a dribble of
braised pork belly sauce, so voila and oh my gosh, I'm just gonna mix it up
a bit and then just give those noodles a go
mmmmm
whoa
they don't have a very strong fish flavour
but the texture, they're almost crunchy
they have a really, sort of the consistency or texture of like a very stiff pasta and there's a lot of chew
so interesting, all right so the first few bites of the fish noodles didn't have a
strong fish flavour but the aftertaste is seafood it's fish so let's go for
another bite
mmmm
all right, so the more I eat, the stronger the fish flavour and the pork flavour is also quite
prominent, the lettuce is really great because it adds a bit of crunch it's
fresh, and then you've got that seaweed flavour on top of that, mmmh it's such an interesting unique
dish
there's this big tub of sort of chilli paste or chilli oil on the table so
I'm gonna dump a whole lot on these noodles and give them a go we'll just
mix that in a bit so you can see all the lettuce, the bits of pork
let's get those noodles covered oh yeah oh yeah
mmmm
oh, mmmm
oh that is good that's really spicy, really good chilli, chilli heat a little
bit tangy, the noodles are an amazing texture, like Sheena said they're
they're kind of like crunchy almost really good and then I love the little
bursts of um lettuce particularly with that, that chilli, the lettuce just
freshened it all up, whoa that's getting hotter, that is good, that is
really good chilli
next up we're hunting down some more noodles and I am very
excited about these ones and I'm excited because they've got eel in them and I
absolutely love eel
we've got these eel noodles and they look great so we've got two versions, the dry
version with the eels and egg noodles some onion and I think some chives or
spring onion and then a wet version as well so the wet version is the same
except it's swimming in this sticky potato starch sort of soup or broth and
these eels are pretty amazing because they're very bloody, they're swamp eels
and they're absolutely covered in blood as you can see up the front there
they're just shining, they're bright red and the eel blood is actually toxic to
humans so you've got to be careful with this stuff and they've gotta be cooked
properly otherwise, big trouble for me, so these are all prepared, he scrapes that
blood off you see him cutting the eel up into
smaller pieces and then it's very simply he throws together the onions the
eel, those um spring onions, big chunks of garlic which he crushes onto his
cutting board with his cleaver and then dumps it all in the wok just like that
and then frys it up really quickly with a lot of heat and this is the end result so
obviously the soupy one has the soup added and the dry one as is so I'm gonna
go for the dry one first cause this really really excites me
I just, this dish looks insane
Oh, mmmm, oh that eel
ohhhh
the eel is a really, really interesting texture
it's almost a little bit crunchy and has a little bit of a slimy feel to it
it's got a great freshness to it though, it's really nice, the dish overall
isn't massively bursting in flavour though I mean the, the onions
obviously taste sort of sweet, they're still a little bit crunchy there is some white
pepper here so I'm gonna douse a bit of that all over the dish if I can get it
out of this container there we go, douse a bit of that on, let's grab another big
piece of eel and then get some more of those noodles
mmmm, mmmm
that dish is incredible, that pepper added a slight little peppery twang but the eel
itself is the hero, I love that, noodles just taste like noodles
everything else just tastes like what you'd expect and that eel, you can taste it
delicate flavour, beautiful texture sort of a little bit crunchy like I said but sort of a fish
flavour oh that is good
now let's grab some of these soupy ones actually
you know what let's just taste this soup by itself see what the flavour is
like in that
oh it's really sweet mmm really sweet, a little bit sticky in
texture, very sweet and then tasted like the onions actually, let's just get some
noodles then, big bit of eel in there ohhhh and they're
just covered in that soup, clinging to the noodles
mmm, mmmm
really, really similar except that one's really sweet, a sweetness from the soup
Oh which one's better? Both super good I think this one needs a bit of the pepper as well
so let's just douse that in the pepper, give it a mix up, another piece of eel
oh yea I love how the eel really
holds together so you can see you grab it with your chopsticks, it doesn't just fall apart which is really nice
oh man
these are good, these are really, really good
a real specialty in this town and I can see why, they're unbelievably tasty
I like the look of this gloopy wet eel dish, all right, got a piece of eel and a heap load of noodles
mmmm, mmm
the soup is really sweet, the noodles very
tender, quite rich tasting and that eel it's just so melt in your mouth, it is
a little bit slimy like Thomas's says, I expected it to be a little bit more
meaty so like fish in texture but it's not it is like a little bit
slimy but it's really flavoursome, it's almost got like a little bit of um charred-ness from being in
that big wok and having that heat directly on it, that's really tasty
what a day of noodle eating, unreal so good, what were your favourites? I would
have to go with the Danzai noodles the second noodles that we
had, the broth was just insanely flavoursome, I liked those eel ones the dry
version just then, very simple but so good and really smoky from the wok like
all that cooking from that wok, the smoke, the fire had imparted itself
perfectly, they were good, really good, thank you so much for watching we really hope you
enjoyed this one, pop a comment down below let us know which noodles appealed
to you the most, give this video a huge thumbs up and if you want to support
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subscribe heaps more food videos coming thanks for watching, zai jian, zai jian