Originally Posted by
bocastephen
How is your spoken Mandarin?
The restaurant is right around the corner from the hotel in the Hua Shan market building, but be prepared for a long wait especially on weekends. The place is called Fu Hang Dou Jiang (阜杭豆漿), and is considered the best in the city - although you'd probably only know the difference if you'd had this food multiple times and have a baseline to compare - I usually eat this type of food in Hacienda Heights CA and there is no comparison.
You can ask the Sheraton concierge to write down some menu items to try, but if you can get these on paper from my post, try some of the following:
Fried egg crepe (like a very thin omelet) 蛋餅
A fried donut inside sesame bread 燒餅油條
Soy Milk (part of the restaurant's name, see the last 2 Chinese characters in the name above) 豆漿
Sweet Soy Milk 甜豆浆
Sticky rice 飯糰
You can ask the concierge to prepare a written order sheet for you and just hand it to the counter for your order...I would also ask for some fried taro cake, and instead of the sweet soy milk, get the peanut soy milk, which is very thick, almost like a peanut milkshake.
This is carbohydrate class 101, so hopefully you'll be doing a lot of walking around after breakfast.
Originally Posted by
bocastephen
The simplicity is what makes it good - and this is really the Taiwanese style vs the HK style of dim sum which is heavier - but in the end, it's up to the poster with the question. I wouldn't look for dim sum in TPE (I'd do that in HK) unless I really had a craving for it, but if someone wants a traditional Taiwanese breakfast, this is the style and place.
I've had the TW style breakfast from a local place on a side lane in a produce district, but that experience is not really best for a tourist unless they speak Mandarin and know what to order.
Having said that, I wish the Sheraton's lounge breakfast had more variety to include a couple of dumpling baskets. I had the breakfast at the Novotel TPE restaurant, and while that place was 10 times the size of the Sheraton lounge, I even had 'do it yourself' Gua Bao - so a little more focus on traditional dishes would be a nice touch at the Sheraton.
A little off topic, but I made the effort to try the dim sum at Tim Ho Wan in HK - even my friend who lived in HK never had a chance to try it, but we went there and discovered the system - get a ticket, come back in 4 hours, then get a priority number, then get in line and maybe get a table in some unknown future timeframe if we're lucky - no thanks, so we passed, Michelin star and all, and bought street food from a vendor.
Originally Posted by
bocastephen
This is the place I go to in Hacienda Heights - the food is pretty decent, assuming you can find a table and don't mind cleaning it yourself, and almost no English spoken by the staff.
Suffice to say, as good as this place is considered, trying these dishes in Taipei is a whole new ballgame. Even the street-side open air corner spot where we had our first breakfast a few weeks back (my other half used to eat here on the way to school each morning, so it's been around) had tastier offerings than Four Sea...
http://www.foodgps.com/four-sea-hacienda-heights/
http://theeatenpath.com/2011/01/26/f...da-heights-ca/
I just wish the Sheraton would add even some of these items to their lounge menu - they are very low cost and would be appreciated by guests. A scoop of 肉鬆 wrapped in warm sticky rice with a little scallion and made into little bite size pieces?
Excellent work here!
I will be in Taipei later this year, so I shall try them too.
One important factor of why such simple food can taste so good is: freshness.
The perpetual long queues ensures freshness. That's why buffet-styled breakfast can't match it - they must have a live-cooking station to even come close.
I believe things like 燒餅油條 taste best when they are just served out from the pan and eaten hot. (once left for too long, especially in a buffet settings, they will turn cold, rubbery and soggy. And hence, not as nice.)
Even their 豆漿 are made round the clock, and batches will be sold within a couple of hours from production, and beans are never stored long before they are made into soy milk. (of course, they must possess the skills and technique to make huge quantity fast at a very high quality control level)
However, Sheraton cannot convert their kitchens to serve such food solely on a high freshness level: the margins are thin for the traditional breakfast, so they earn on volume. Sheraton needs to charge a premium for their ambience cost, and if low margin diners eat and don't leave (cos of good ambience), then they do not get the turnover (and hence not the volume of diners as well).
It would be really nice if I can enjoy such great traditional breakfast at Sheraton settings. Perhaps the chefs at Sheraton can think a way around it to ensure great quality control, despite the lower volume. @:-)