we're in Taipei Taiwan to eat and this place has a ridiculous amount of food so
we can't wait to show you guys some of the best
if you love to eat Taipei is
the city for you, we're hunting down the best food this city has to offer and
taking you to where the locals eat, watch out for golden flatbreads, unique
Taiwanese meatballs, fluffy scallion pancakes and loads more, this food is
guaranteed to make you hungry
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate
we hope you're hungry, let's eat!
we're really excited to be in Taipei we're
gonna be traveling all around the city food hunting to find some really
delicious food and our first stop we're gonna grab a shaobing, a flatbread
picked up our shaobing and a cold soy milk to go with it and I love in Asia
how a bread like this a really simple bread is often your breakfast and in
Taiwan it's often paired with a soy milk hot or cold we've gone for cold it's
really hot here this flat bread looks amazing, look how
golden it is so we went with the omelet one so inside there is a spring onion
omelet and then the flatbread itself is full of spring onions so it's a very
basic wheat dough which he was prepping right on the street huge amounts of it
actually basic wheat dough which he was filling with those spring onions, folding
shut, pasting with a little bit of water and then just sprinkling sesame seeds on
it, white sesame seeds and then chucking them into the oven which was right on
the footpath and it was made from a 44 gallon drum so a petrol drum which was
filled then with clay to make it like a clay oven and he had
a bunch of really hot charcoasl burning in the bottom of that oven and the the
stone when he put the bread into the oven onto that stone just got the most
beautiful, crispy golden
base going really, really quickly and then the top side of the bread the one
that was exposed to the fire just slowly got a beautiful golden tinge on it so
this is just beautiful looking and it's been cut in half and had that omelet put
straight inside it's a really simple breakfast
wow, mmmm
it's just such a simple flavour I love it the egg is a really strong taste it's
quite a fluffy omelette, the bread has a little bit of chew, it's quite salty the
bread it's got a lovely edge of saltiness not a sweetness at all which I
love first thing in the morning I don't really want a really sweet bread, I love this
saltiness, the bread's got a really good chew but then a great crunch where
it's had that heat straight on it, let's have a bit of the soy milk as well
mmmm whoa
that's really good soy milk, oh that's really good, it's really creamy and has a very nice
strong soy flavour, actually that's really good that's a little bit sweet so that's
gonna go really well with the saltiness of the bread, this is such an awesome way
to start the day and so the restaurant is just over here and you'll see where
the green is no signage, cooking right on the street, it's such a great way to
start the day, a little handheld snack you can just wolf down really easily, a
soy milk, ohhh just the feeling of eating this way being in Asia I love it
it is a really good start to this huge food day in Taipei
it's sweltering hot here in Taipei today so our next snack is gonna be really
light and simple, some cold sesame noodles
I've got my plate of cold sesame noodles and there's a table full of condiments
here a bucket filled with pickled cabbage and chilli
and then some chilli oil so I'm just gonna load up my plate
how good does this plate of noodles look so it's made up of a cold wheat noodle
so the guys have a huge pot of cooked noodles up there and they toss them onto
the plate, add a ton of different sources so we've got the sesame sauce underneath
there, I think some vinegar and then also some minced garlic and then they pop a
ton of this shredded cucumber or julienned cucumber on the top and then I added
those extra condiments so that pickled cabbage with chilli and then also
a few drops of chilli oil to give it a bit of spice
now with a noodle dish like this the best thing to do is just to mix it all
up so I'm gonna get all of that sesame sauce coating those noodles and this is
the perfect thing to be eating on a day like this when you can't stomach the
thought of a hot noodle soup this cold noodle dish is just so ideal
we've got all of those sauces mixed in and all of those vegetables as well, all right
mmm, ohhhh
that is so good, those noodles are pretty springy and then you've got the crunch of those vegetables, the cucumber
and the pickled cabbage, really fresh and crunchy and then that sesame
sauce is insanely good it's really aromatic and just by me sort of
moving the noodles like this I can smell that sesame, look at how the sesame
sauce just coats every strand of these noodles so the sauce is just dripping
off the noodles
mmmmm
mmm, mmm, mmmm, mmmmm
that bite just there had a really strong hit of that minced garlic and I love
dishes like these because the flavours are really bold and vibrant, so you've got heat
and spice from that chilli oil, a really strong nuttiness from that
sesame and then there's just great texture, there's the crunch from
the pickled cabbage and the cucumber and then the springiness of the noodles
all just works in harmony really really well and it makes for a really tasty dish
the next place we're eating is right behind me and the smells coming from
this restaurant- ridiculous it smells so good so we're having a braised pork knuckle
here and that is why the smell is just to die for
we've ordered a bowl of this braised pork knuckle and it looks unreal, look at
the pork knuckle so there's a huge meaty piece look at all that fat under that
layer of skin and more meat under there so you've got a bunch of big pieces of pork
you've got some sort of boiled cabbage you've got a braised egg there so a
whole egg, some pickled mustard greens it looks like, some just normal greens, a
whole lot of white rice underneath it all, but this pork let's just rip this
part open and just see oh wow I'm doing nothing to rip that up that's unreal
unreal, I'll get a huge spoon of trying to get everything going at the same time
ripped off a huge piece of that pork so I've got some nice skin on there
whole lot of cabbage, some rice
mmm
wow, mmm
wow
that is good, that pork is
ridiculously soft and tender and so easy to eat, the the layer of fat and the
skin completely just dissolved in my mouth and then the meat itself was actually it
had a little bit of tenderness it wasn't ridiculously soft and fall apart you
still had a little bit of chew even though it was very very soft, I'll break up
some more just to show you how easy that is I mean look at that, that is unreal and
it's so dark because it's all braised in soy and sort of spices and herbs so very
brown in colour, we've got this egg actually let's try and rip into this egg
next oh it's super spongy, rubbery oh look at that the colour's gone right
through the egg, alright some pork and that piece of egg
oh the egg's really, really creamy and has a lot of flavour from that I'm braising as well
that's really, really good, let's grab this ridiculously juicy looking bit of
pork, I want some mustard greens on top of this one so some mustard greens let's
put some actual greens on there too oh man look at that for a mouthful
oh man
it's unreal, those mustard greens those pickled ones
are not too sharp, not too vinegary so they just work really well they've got a
little bit of crunch, the cabbage is a little bit fresher you've got that
creamy egg which has taken on lots of flavours, it is an awesome awesome dish
and I think it's got a very small amount of chilli in it, like a tiny amount
it's just the tiniest tingle on my tongue which just comes through at the end and
that really really rounds out the mouthful
the food hunting continues and we have come to a new part of Taipei to hunt down a
stall which supposedly has one of the best cong you bing or scallion pancakes
in Taipei
I've got my cong you bing or my spring onion or scallion pancake in my hot
little hand and this thing is smelling so good, so it's really simple it's
just a plain wheat flour dough which they pop into a press and then they pop
on a hotplate and it's got some spring onions dotted throughout it but that is
basically it, it reminds me so much of a roti canai or a prata from
Malaysia and Singapore and whoa I've just got to get into it
mmmm, mmmm
you can see all the layers there it's so layered and flaky and it's got a
beautiful aroma from that spring onion so there aren't too many in there but
just enough to give it a really beautiful flavour
I was watching her as she was cooking up these cong you bing on the hotplate and
before she served them up she was smacking them with her spatulas just to
fluff them up and give them a bit more sort of oomph and oh it's so good
hmm so much flavour, this is just a really simple and tasty snack we
opted for the original version so it's just the pancake with the spring onion
people were ordering it with egg and ham but I reckon the original is really
really tasty, the flavour of that spring onion is really strong, it's really good
we've come to this really nice quiet neighbourhood now and we're gonna try bawan
his is a Taiwanese meatball, I've seen these all over Taiwan when we've
been travelling around and I am super excited to try these because they look
really good
we're here at the perfect time, we've just ordered our bawan but she's just
making up a fresh batch so you can see it's a potato starch and rice flour
mixture which is really wet and she's got a little cone shape and she's dumping the pork
mixture inside so the meatball mixture and then it gets covered in this starchy
sort of gloopy liquid before it all gets steamed, that's really cool to see
these bawan look absolutely great I loved seeing her pull them out of the
giant steamer so they're a, they're a meatball so in there is a pork meatball
but it's covered in this gloopy sort of skin, look at the way it's sticking to
the chopsticks there so it's a potato starch skin so it's super gloopy feeling
then she covered it in the sauce I'm not sure if that's a sweet or like a savory
sauce and then some just sort of diced up coriander on top
I'm gonna grab wow it's so sticky actually look at this I'm gonna try and
get this off the plate without, look how sticky it is, I can hardly get it off the
plate oh wow that is crazy that skin and a really loose pork mixture inside now
there's some condiments on the table so there's sweet sauce I think a spicy
sauce and a whole lot of garlic, I'm gonna go with some spicy sauce on top of
this one, big dollop of that and then a little spoon of this really
finely diced garlic and I'll get some of that coriander on there too wow I
can't believe the texture of this thing I can't even pick it up
mmm, mmmm
ohhh, wow
oh the pork mixture inside, very light and very, sort of lightly packed
so breaks up really easy, it's not a it's not a chewy meatball very very easy
to eat, that skin is great, there's some left
that's really nice, doesn't have much flavour itself but has flavour of that
sauce which is a sort of a salty but also kind of a sweet sauce too it's got
both elements going on at once and that chilli sauce I added wasn't too
spicy actually and the garlic I added, added a really nice strong, sharp garlicky
kick
I'm gonna pop some of this sweet chilli sauce on my bawan and then just a
little dollop of that garlic, I can smell it, it's so strong okay there we go and
then try and get this sticky little sucker off the plate, it's so gloopy that
outer skin oh my gosh it's completely stuck
alright I think I've got to go the meatball first the meatball part first and then the
skin
all right, mmmm
mmmm, ohhhh
holy moly that is delicious, the skin is really gloopy and soft and quite moist
and then the mince is quite coarse in texture so I also got like a
bit of pork and then the rest was mince and it's got a real beautiful flavour
adding that garlic and that sweet chilli just really gathered another hit of
intenseness too, this is delicious
that was absolutely delicious I loved
those I got another plate just cause I enjoyed them so much and I love
watching the stuff get made right in front of you we're sitting right beside
all the cooking process going on, awesome place
another massive and great day of
eating here in Taipei we've made videos all over Taiwan so don't forget to check
out the playlist which will be down in the description box
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