we're in Tainan, Taiwan this place is regarded as the country's
culinary capital and there is a ton of street food here so we're going on a
massive food hunt today
if you love to eat Tainan is the city for you in this
video we hand out some of the best food in the city widely regarded as Taiwan's
culinary capital watch out for the freshest oyster omelet
Tainan's famous snacks and the most ingenious biscuit oven you've ever seen
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate, we hope you're hungry, let's eat!
Tainan is known as the city of snacks and we're starting our day with our
first snack of a Taiwanese oyster omelet from this stall right behind me let's
go and get one
we have got our o ah jian or oyster omelet in front of us and how good does this
thing look? There's tonnes of plump oysters and it's smothered in a variety of
sauces and I think what is best about this setup is that we are literally
sitting right on the street, at the chef's kitchen so we've got all the
ingredients lined up in front of us there's the eggs, there's oysters on ice, there's
beansprouts, fresh lettuce and you can watch the chef at work
let's rip into this thing I want to show you all the multitude of ingredients
that make up this oyster omelet so look at that all the fresh sliced lettuce and then
some beansprouts, there's some pickles or maybe yeah pickles or actually that
might be some meat it might be some mince actually and then those plump,
plump oysters so let's get a huge bite, swipe it through those sauces
oh this looks so good
mmmmm, oh!
those oysters, they are so fresh
really briny, have a beautiful sea flavour and then what makes the oyster omelet in
Taiwan really unique is the potato starch, so it binds everything together and it
almost has a like a silky ,tiny bit gluggy um texture in the mouth but this
one doesn't um have a huge whack load of that potato starch sometimes it can be
too much and the whole thing's really gluggy this chef has just put just enough
to bind everything together
let's swipe another mouthful through this sauce, okay
mmmm, mmm, mmmm, mmmmm
the flavours are so fresh, you can really taste the flavour of the egg
the beansprouts, the oysters, the lettuce and that sauce there is quite sweet
it's almost like a sweet fermented bean sauce and
then there's another sauce on there which tastes a bit like hoisin sauce this is really
good it is so full of texture and flavour
a really popular breakfast here in Tainan is milkfish congee so we're
gonna go grab some from this place here
"and one you tiao, thank you"
we've got our bowl of milkfish congee on the table and to go with it we ordered a
you tiao which is a fried dough fritter so congee is a rice porridge and you can see
here that this one is quite a soupy one so you've got this fish stock and then
the rice grains underneath there's also a bit of minced pork and I think some
coriander and some roasted garlic and then the star of the show is this huge
filet of milkfish so you can see it's been totally de-boned and then
this dark bit in the middle here is the milkfish belly which is sort of quite
fatty looking ok let's get into this thing I'm gonna get a huge bite of the
milkfish, it just fell apart and then some of that congee
mmmm, mmm, mmmm, mmmmm
whoa that is a really beautiful flavour the congee has got a really strong
seafood flavour and also you can really taste that fried garlic and then the fish
it's just really mild, really tender and it just breaks apart in your mouth
I'm gonna go for another bite there's a little bit of that belly in
there
mmmm
the belly is really fatty it just dissolves in your mouth, let's go again
grab a piece of that milkfish it just broke clean away
mmmmm, mmm!
it's just a really simple clean-tasting bowl of food and the way they make the congee
is they simply take a ladle of cooked rice and then they pour the broth over
the top, so the broth and the rice are really separate, you can really just get
spoonfuls of that broth it's really flavoursome, it tastes very savoury and then
the rice adds a bit of texture and then what you do with the you tiao is you
just break a bit off and then you can just pop it into the congee and then
just give it a bit of texture so we'll let it wallow for a little bit then
let's just try it
mmmm
it's really simple just a lightly salted dough fritter, it's quite oily and it soaked
up that broth so when you bite into it, it sort of oozes with broth
we're walking down these tiny little lanes in the city and there's a beautiful smell
in this lane and that's because we're going to this little place behind me
where they do cookies or biscuits and it looks like these are made in a really
neat way
that was so cool watching the cookies being made they had such a neat
contraption to put them together, they do two sorts so we've got this miso one
here is what we saw getting made they also do a egg one which is just their
normal one but we're gonna have their miso ones because that's what we saw getting made
then and she took took a really thick batter and put it on the hot plate but
then closed the hot plate down and it was gas fired underneath and what I
loved is once she closed it down and spread all this batter out, then when she
spun that big machine around every time she moved it one step the hot plate
would turn over so each side got exactly the same amount of heat as it worked its
way around, then she peeled the quite big piece of cookie which was really soft
still off, almost like a thick pancake in texture it looked like, placed it with a
little sort of a bar on it just to give it a bit of a shape, so you can see here
it's got an indentation in it and that's because of that bar and then
once it was not quite hard she cut it into these little strips and now it is
cooled and it is super super solid it's gonna be really crunchy so let's get into
it
whoa
that is really crunchy hmm but quite light it's a little bit aerated so
this is miso flavoured but I can't taste a whole lot of miso, it's
sort of just tastes like a plain biscuit or a cookie, quite sweet, really nice just
really more-ish there's not too much strong flavour so this packet I think's gonna
disappear really quick and that's a really cool place to watch those getting
made and its fourth generation so they've certainly perfected the recipe
that's good
I just ate a tonne of those biscuits cause they were so moreish and
easy to eat and they got really salty as I went on which is really nice it
balanced out that sweet flavour now on the way to this biscuit place we saw a
ice jelly, like grass jelly place on the side of the road it looked amazing and
refreshing in this hot hot weather we're having here today we're gonna go
grab one
we got this iced treat that was whipped up right on the street for us so it's a
really chunky ice which he hand ground into this but underneath the ice he put
a couple of different jellies there was definitely a grass jelly a black one
that he put in there, let's dig in and then there's a much lighter jelly too I'm
not really sure what that one is there was also some sugar syrup that went on
the, on the top of that ice after he'd shaved it in using that hand ice grinder
and it's a really thick grind so it's melting really quick
mmmm
whoa
yum
it's not too sweet from the sugar the ice is of course super cold and it's
really really hot here so that is perfect, let's grab another spoon with
both of those jellies in there oh it's melting so quick
mmm, mmmm
the grass jelly is really nice it's a tiny bit bitter and the other one the
clear jelly I've no idea what it is, it's got a sort of a herbal taste that's
even more bitter actually but it's really refreshing in its bitterness and
I love that it's not too sweet it's so good it's
completely collapsing, like it's turning to jelly soup really quickly but man
what a refreshing thing to have and I love how they're being made right on the
street there
the food hunt continues and next up we're going to eat a wa gui which is a
savoury rice pudding
we've got our wa gui or savoury rice pudding here and I am just gonna dig into it, look at it it's so
sticky so at the bottom here there's a lot of meat so things like pork and
salted egg I believe and how they make it is they pour a rice, ground rice
batter onto the top and then they steam it and then they pour the sticky sauce on
top, so let's just try a bite
mmmm, ohhh, that bite
I think had some dried shrimp in it had a really strong seafood flavour
and it's just a really smooth, sticky, gluggy, consistency
they've got
this super runny garlic mixture on the table so I'm going to dump a big spoon
of that in there and there's also some sort of chilli sauce it's really light
in colour so let's put that on, that might actually be a little bit of horseradish
based or wasabi let's just dig in, lots of that garlic and that chilli
whoa, that garlic is
super strong, super strong like having a nude garlic clove, raw and just
popping it in your mouth and crunching down on it
massive burst of flavour and that chilli is a little bit tangy it is sort of
horseradish-y actually it's got a little bit of tanginess to it
really good spice level and this texture of this pudding I absolutely love it oh
look at that, it's a duck egg there um salted duck egg, oh awesome
I'm gonna try and break that up actually let's just get a huge spoon oh man
oh look at that texture I'll never fit that all in let's try
mmmm
the sauce on top, is really nice and sweet the
texture of the rice is amazing and then I love all the flavors you've
got the savoury flavors of the the meat and the the salted duck egg, sweetness of
that sauce and then adding these really helps particularly the garlic that just
really burst, this is really good
Tainan has so much food there is just food everywhere so that's our first
video of the three we're gonna make here before we head to Taipei to make way
more food videos it's been a really good food day, thank you so much for watching
remember to hit that subscribe button, a tonne more food videos to come pop a
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watching and we'll see you next time, zai jian, zai jian