Following on from Eating in Taipei – Part – Ningxia Night Market, we also explored the Shilin Night Market. Shilin is considered Taipei’s biggest night market. The train was packed with other people also wanting to check out Shilin as the station stops diagonally across from the markets. We followed our noses and the people up a main street which had several street food stalls selling delicious goodies.
One of the longest queues was for Taiwanese fried chicken at Hometown Barbecue Chicken which Mr FPJ lined up for.
It was about a 20 minute wait in the queue before we finally got to the front. There was a bit of a production line with a person frying the chicken, a person turning the chicken over a grill, and then a person putting each piece into a paper bag for customers.
The fried chicken made a wonderful çrunch as we bit into it. Perfectly crunchy on the outside and so juicy on the inside, it tasted amazing. We were also impressed that it was such a large piece of chicken. Mr FPJ was tempted to rejoin the now longer queue for another one!
Another fried chicken spot is Hotstar Fried Chicken, its first of several stores located by the Shilin Night Markets. We thought we’d check out some food other than fried chicken, keeping it in mind for a snack later on (though we never ended up going). After passing more stalls along the street, we reached the main undercover market inside a large building.
In addition to food, there were souvenir stores, clothing and game stalls including mah-jong. We found these phallus shaped desserts. You had to buy it by the box which was actually pretty heavy!
There were plenty of different foods on offer – meat on a stick, seafood, chicken wings, giant King Oyster mushrooms being grilled, and various street desserts.
I found a stall selling Taiwanese pancakes in the shape of Totoro. I love Totoro so I had to buy some of these. There were 5 pieces per serve and you could choose plain, matcha or chocolate sponge, except all 5 had to be the same flavour.
As much as I wanted matcha, I decided to stick with the original flavour. Batter was poured into Totoro shaped moulds.
Then the mould press plate was closed. The Totoro came out hot with a very hot custardy centre. They weren’t pancakes but more like hot custard puffs. I should not have made the decision to pop a whole one in my mouth as the hot custard burnt my mouth.
I managed to take a close up photo of the chocolate Totoro too.
We saw a queue for some pepper beef buns cooked in a kiln by sticking each bun to the side. We were really curious about it, so joined the queue.
It was one of our best decisions that night – they were fabulous!!
The bun’s pastry was slightly flakey on the outside, thick enough to hold the beef mince without it getting soggy, but thin enough to be nice and light.
There was a generous amount of juicy beef mince inside mixed with some scallions, various herbs and pepper. It was also extremely hot that we burnt our tongues as we couldn’t wait to bite into it. This was SOOO good! A must try!
It soon got very packed and it felt like we were being squished in the crowd. The benefit of that is that we could slowly walk and look around at all the stalls.
We came back to the Shilin Night Markets on another night and made a beeline to the pepper beef bun stall as it really was that delicious.
I finally tried stinky tofu which we could smell downwind. The smell was pungent, like something had gone off. Mr FPJ hated it. But I had to try it at least once and made him try it too. There was a large pot of stinky tofu being stirred by the stallholder when we got there.
One serve (I can’t remember the cost) consisted of quite a lot of stinky tofu accompanied by pickled cabbage and carrots in a small plastic bag.
It was a little sour, like the broth had gone off, but didn’t taste as bad as it smelled. Mr FPJ tried it and spat it out. Not for everyone. I didn’t finish it but I’m happy to tick it off my list.
We then came across a bar called Funky Fresh and Mr FPJ stopped in for a beer. The taps may have been the main attraction.
Mr FPJ was pleased to find out that Funky Fresh sells local Taiwanese craft beers. They do a tasting platter of beers but Mr FPJ was only in the mood for one.
The beer came with some chips and it was nice to sit outside and people-watch. We had a nice chat to the owners who were very friendly wanting to know where we were from, where we were travelling, and other foods we had come across at the markets. Happy Hour at Funky Fresh was advertised as ‘before 9pm’ with beers costing NT $150 or AUD $6.70.
We wandered out and found a set of stairs leading down to a basement food court with various stalls and seating. There was so much colour and photos of food. Nothing really caught our fancy so we headed back upstairs to continue our discovery of the Shilin Night Markets.
I spotted a stall selling deep fried milk and needed to know what deep fried milk tasted like. It comes on a stick with three balls of deep fried milk on it. The batter was perfection and the milk, though quite plain, was almost like a cake pop but much much lighter.
I tried an oyster omelette which I had read was a must-try. It came covered in a thick gravy. I did not like it at all. It had an extremely ‘fishy’ taste (and I love seafood!) and the texture was too gooey and raw for my liking. I left most of it on the plate. I don’t know if it was because I picked the wrong stall or I just didn’t like it (though I love oysters). Mr FPJ did not like it one bit.
We also passed by this large stall selling the jiggliest bread/cake at a stall called Le Old Time Flavour. One large slab had just come out of the oven and we watched as it was being measured against a ruler and cut into sections with a massive knife. It was 40cm wide and must have been nearly 80cm long.
There were two types to choose from – original or with cheese. Mr FPJ wanted to try it with cheese so we asked for that one. We only wanted to try a slice, however the smallest size we could buy was about the size of a loaf! Around 25cm long, 10cm fat, and 10cm high! Way too big for the two of us. But being about AUD $4, we indulged.
The only English I could find was on the take away box advertising it as ‘Original Cake’.
The cake was extremely soft and fluffy, like nothing I’d ever tasted. Not quite bread as it was far from dense, but not quite cake that I’m used to as it was bland and not sugary. I loved that it was so warm and jiggly, but it was also too eggy for our liking.
That’s all from Shilin Night Markets!
Tips:
- Go early
- Join any queue if you don’t mind what you try
- Pepper pork buns are a must!
- Taiwanese Fried Chicken is a must!
- I’d recommend at least 2 hours per visit
- The Shilin Night Markets are the biggest in Taipei so it might take two or three visits to try most things.
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