King crab dinner

After a day of errands and a couple of administrative things - I always try to keep busy on the first day arriving from the States to ward off the afternoon slump, we visited a seafood restaurant known for king crab. I have no idea what the English name is, but 阿嚕米帝王蟹餐廳 is the restaurant name in Mandarin. Don't let the lower Google rating scare you off... locals typically don't really use Google / Yelp / Tripadvisor it turns out, and low ratings I find are typically attributed to lack of English / Asian style of service and not the food itself.

This has been one of my mom's favorites for a while and was her selection for her birthday dinner. We ordered a king crab out of the tank and a few other dishes to share. The king crab was cooked two ways: steamed with garlic and soy (delicious) with hand-cut noodles, and grilled simply with salt and pepper. The steamed version was by far the favorite, and I prefer the Chinese interpretations of crab as opposed to the more heavy, Western, butter-laden versions. Meals at this restaurant also come with unlimited braised fatty pork rice (lu rou fan), a Taiwanese staple and a childhood favorite of mine. You can have as much as you want, but we stuck to just one bowl (to sample, of course) to make room for the higher-value items.

Today's crab was from Norway, with the shop owner specifically mentioning they are not sourcing the Russian varieties given the geopolitical environment as of late. The total cost of the meal was about $500 USD - not cheap, but cheaper than what you'd find stateside for such a meal.


Braised pork rice



Steamed fish



Grilled king crab


Steamed garlic and soy crab with handcut noodles


MAJI Square and Shilin Night Market

After a family lunch at a traditional, banquet style Taiwanese restaurant, my parents and I headed over to the Taipei Expo Park where we heard there was a flower and fruit market. Having visited Taipei on many occasions (and spending summers there as a child), I think you sometimes lose the tourist-mentality and fail to visit attractions. This time, however, I wanted to make sure I was seeing some of the sights Taipei had to offer, potentially in preparation for friends clamoring to have me as their tour guide in the future.

A quick sidebar on the Taipei Metro - or MRT... it was always a fascination of mine as a child. Something about how well-structured, clean, organized, and efficient it is still gets me to this day. There are clear queuing lines, easy-to-follow exits (integrated into Google Maps even..), soothing songs that play 15 seconds before a train arrives, boards that tell you train arrival time down to the second, clean bathroom facilities in many stations, underground metro malls, and best of all - English.

The beeps of the automated card readers, chirps of the door closing, whir of the trains accelerating out of the station, and station announcements played in four languages (Mandarin, English, Taiwanese, Hakka) have stayed the same throughout the last ~15 years.

Trips are cheap - the most I've ever paid on a fare was something like $50 NTD (~$1.60 USD). Typically I pay somewhere between $15-$30 NTD ($0.50 - $1.00 USD) The network is massive and gets you to most places you would ever need to go. This comes at a huge contrast to Seattle's scattered, one-line system (though more to come.. but we'll have to wait up until 2045). You likely will want to get a transit card (unclear if there are single trip tickets as I've always had a transit card). The only thing the Chicago L system / London Tube have on Taipei is the ability to use Apple Pay / other contactless payments. My assumption here is credit cards aren't as well proliferated in the Taiwanese market and transit cards are easier (you primarily load them with cash at self-service machines).



We took the red line over to Yuanshan to visit the Taipei Expo Park in the afternoon. There were local vendors hawking primarily agricultural products (e.g., honey, mushrooms, vegetables), with plenty of locals queueing to buy artisan potatoes. The farmer's market vibe has certainly made it to Asia! However, it's still in its infancy... the lack of English (both signage and on the part of locals) makes it difficult to engage in the age old trade-and-barter here. Limited food vendors, however, as those seem to be more reserved for streetsides and night markets.

Behind the market, there is a development called MAJI Square. This seems more of a newage, open air food hall - there are vendors selling all types of Taiwanese delicacies, including tacos, burgers, fish and chips, and wine.

Many youths abound here in a courtyard directly adjacent - all primarily practicing dance routines for TikTok.

On the other side, there is a nice tree-lined square with a stage for live music (I found the Mandarin-tinted version of "Feliz Navidad" to be particularly amusing), surrounded by Taiwanese interpretations of foreign specialist - a European "cafe," Argentinian gaucho steakhouse, more tacos. Overall, a nice vibe and very close to the MRT if you're in the area.









Shilin Night Market

I typically have a list of must-eats when I'm in Taipei, which are primarily street food: fantuan (essentially a Taiwanese breakfast burrito where the outside is sticky rice, filled with Chinese donut, pork floss, egg, and a variety of other condiments), hujiaobing (Tandoori-oven baked pepper pork buns), tanghulu (fruit... usually tomatoes but also strawberries covered in a candy shell on a stick), savory radish pastries, scallion pancakes... not to mention Din Tai Fung spicy wontons (which are leagues better, and cheaper, than their American counterparts).

I always leave a "...?" category in my list to capture whatever new innovations the street vendors have these days. Taipei has a few primary night markets anyone who's done research will have heard of: Shilin (the most popular), Ningxia (central), Raohe (famous for pepper pork buns), Lingjiang (more traditional).

We settled on Shilin as it was closest to the Taipei Expo Park - just one stop away on the MRT Red Line. You actually get off a Jiantan (not Shilin) as this is closer to the entrance.

For Shilin, there is a very attractive indoor night market that has proper places (counters and stools, which is as proper as you can get at a night market) to sit, but my family typically stays away from this and walks through the ~15 square blocks of streets surrounding for proper street food vendors. They think it's "touristy," but I have to remind them that the Shilin night market itself is one of the most touristy of them all - which is why it's fun.

Jetlag hitting with limited appetite, we reserved ourselves to just hitting some of the primaries - a copycat hujiaobing vendor, a fun "long fry" vendor, and the newest innovative item we haven't seen before: takoyaki-style croquettes with mini shrimp, cheese, and quail egg. Unfortunately these were just okay, so I might just stick to the classics. Most street food items will run you between $30-$100 NTD ($1.00 - $3.50 USD)... which make for an incredibly efficient meal in terms of ratio between enjoyment and cost. I'll reconsider the ratio if you add in the "health" aspect, but... when in Rome.

The night market was insanely crowded - again, attributed to the holiday period (even though locals don't typically take this time off, but again, many expatriates returning home for the first time in a while).


Extra long fries


Shrimp / quail egg / cheese croquettes


Black pepper pork buns going in



Stuck against the clay oven



Almost ready!



Won't win any aesthetic awards but the taste is to die for





Next up, a domestic flight from Taipei Songshan (TSA) to Taitung (TTT) on EVA Air's red-headed stepsister, Uni Air and a few days on the southeast coast of Taiwan (Taitung).