Food in Taitung

Crowded night market

Every county in Taiwan will have at least one night market, and Taitung, despite small in size, also has one that boasts several delicious food. Known as Taitung Cheng-chi Road Night Market (台東正氣路觀光夜市), the night market is located on Cheng-chi Road and is opened on every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights. Lucky for us, we were there on Friday and Saturday nights, so we went there on both nights to eat our fill. Cheng-chi Road is also popularly known as Fruits Street （水果街） – there are many fruits stalls along the street, selling custard apples (釋迦) that Taitung was famous for.

BBQ Bun (烤肉割包)

We ate about the same thing as we ate in other night markets, but here are 2 stores that I would recommend you to try if you are there! The first would be this BBQ Bun stall with an insane queue.

The boss is busy barbequing away!

There are 2 types of buns to choose from – one is known as Wafu sauce BBQ bun (pure lean meat) while the other is Hakka BBQ bun (with fatty meat). The bun costs NT$35 for one and NT$100 for 3, and I think there’s the option to add cheese for another NT$10.

While we are awaiting to get our buns, X took a photo of a little kid playing games. The night market has many games for kids, and one of them is this shooting game, really adorable watching them trying to shoot the targets down!

Wafu sauce BBQ bun

We added cheese for this lean meat version and the meat is smoky and not oily as lean meat is used. Can’t really remember much about the wafu sauce, but overall a pretty delicious bun.

Hakka BBQ bun

The Hakka version uses fatty meat and it has preserved salted vegetables and flavoured with a special concoction of sesame powder. This is my preferred bun as the smoky meat goes well with the salted vegetables, with the felt melting away in the mouth. Mmmm!

Justice Soybean Pudding and Dumplings (正氣豆花湯圓)

This shop is extremely popular for its very silky soybean pudding. The small shop, built using planks of wood, is crowded with patrons. We bought one and ate it somewhere else as we were lazy to wait for a seat.

Interior of the shop – so crowded!

We ordered a combination of soybean pudding and grass jelly – a refreshing cold dessert to enjoy in the summer heat.

More games for the kids!

At the recommendation of our hostel aka min-su (民宿) owners, we visited 2 extremely popular food stores.

The first is Lau Dong Tai Mi Tai Mu (老東台米苔目) (shown on the left of the photo above, look at the queue!). Mi Tai Mu is known as silver needle noodles in English, and is a type of Chinese noodles. In Chinese, the noodles are only known as Lao Shu Fen (老鼠粉) and Yin Zhen Fen (銀針粉).

While queuing, we were given the menu and we ordered a soup and dried version of Mi Tai Mu, a plate of braised pork’s intestine (my favourite!) and the popular meatballs.

To be perfectly honest, we weren’t very wowed by the noodles as it was pretty bland – but probably because we were too accustomed to all the strong-flavoured food in the night markets.

Dried mi tai mu

Braised pork intestines

My ultimate favourite from this store has got to be the chewily-tender braised large pork intestines. If you love pork innards, do try this, it’s really good!

Pork balls

They used the same sauce for the pork balls as the intestines. It’s supposedly one of the more popular snacks besides the mi tai mu, but I still think the pork intestines are way better.

Lim’s Stinky Tofu (林家臭豆腐)

But the dish that won hands down in Taitung has got to be this plate of stinky tofu. Located just next to the mi tai mu store, the queue for this delicious plate of stinky tofu can get pretty long. Available in small (NT$35), medium (NT$50) and large (NT$100), these tofu are deep-fried until extremely crispy on the outside but still soft on the inside. The boss will then poke a hole in each tofu and drizzle a special concoction of chili sauce and serve it with a generous portion of preserved vegetables. And I have to say it is really, extremely stinky, but X and I really love it very much! The crispy tofu, spicy sauce and preserved vegetables… it is by far the best plate of stinky tofu we have ever eaten.

If you happen to be in Taitung, here are the addresses of the places I’ve mentioned earlier:

Taitung Cheng-chi Road Night Market (台東正氣路觀光夜市)

Cheng Chi Road (between Bo’Ai Road and Zhong Shan Road) (台東縣台東市正氣路(博愛路至中山路間))
Every Wed; Fri and Sat nights

Lau Dong Tai Mi Tai Mu (老東台米苔目)

No. 132 Cheng Chi Road, Taitung, Taiwan (台東巿正氣路134號)
4pm – 12 midnight
Mi Tai Mu – NT$30/NT$40; Egg – NT$5; Meatballs – NT$20; Large porks intestines – NT$80

Lim’s Stinky Tofu (林家臭豆腐)

No. 132 Cheng Chi Road, Taitung, Taiwan (台東巿正氣路134號)
4pm – 12 midnight
Small (NT$35) / Medium (NT$50) / Large (NT$100)

---

Want more of Taiwan? For the rest of the posts on Taiwan, see our Taiwan travel itinerary here!