One of the coolest things about older cities is that they aren’t perfectly planned. Roads aren’t necessarily straight lines and newer buildings stand next to buildings that have stood for more than 100 years. These features add character to a place. Yet, when it’s 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity and you’re looking for breakfast first thing in the morning, it can be a bit frustrating when you find yourself walking down a residential street to find breakfast at a place with a name that is only written in Chinese. Yet, that only made finding 丰盛号 in that alley over on the left all the better.
You see, 丰盛号 means “Abundant Number” in English, which doesn’t exactly make sense, but whatever, there are plenty of weird restaurant names everywhere. What matters is that when we walked in, there was a blackboard proclaiming that Abundant Number one of “The top 10 must-eat in Taipei” in plain English. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to actually eat in the restaurant, so we placed our to-go orders from their English menu and found a park for eating.
But you’re probably wondering what a place called Abundant Number serves, because the name doesn’t describe anything whatsoever. Basically, Abundant Number specialized in sandwiches and I chose the spicy meat sandwich from the breakfast side of things. Now, to describe this as just any breakfast sandwich would be a disservice to Abundant Number. This sandwich was made of perfectly toasted white bread that is somehow hard to describe because it was so good, but still white bread (allegedly the bread is toasted over charcoal, which may contribute to its inexplicable yumminess). Inside that white bread was a beautiful hunk of pork that was easy to bite off and only disappointing in the sense that it didn’t fill out the whole sandwich despite being a decent amount of meat. Then, there was the fried egg, melted cheese and spicy sauce that filled out the rest of the sandwich in a delicious way.
I did not expect to find such a delicious breakfast sandwich in Taipei, but there I was taking down something beautiful from Abundant Number. I didn’t get to spend enough time in Taipei to really decide if it deserved to be one of “The top 10 must-eat in Taipei,” but I certainly appreciated the meal.
