One thing that the Shilin Night Market is especially known for is giant flattened fried chicken. And there is not just one place that offers such chicken, but many. Having already had the chicken from Hot Star in Pasadena, I decided to try something else. One spot had an insane line that I simply could not handle, so I headed to Monga, a place that my friend had recommended.

Monga wasn’t served out of a cart or a stall, but a real brick and mortar hole in the wall in the market. There were a couple of options and I went with the “Anaheim” style fried chicken. It was supposed to be the spicier variety, but I was told it wouldn’t be too bad.

They were right, while there was some spice, it was not nearly something that should be called spicy or hot. It was, however, delicious and I was surprised by this. I say that, because on the outside the chicken was somewhat smooth, so there was very little crunch or crispiness to the fried up batter. The reason this was so good was because the crispiness of the batter really played second fiddle to how juicy and flavorful the chicken was. I mean it was super juicy and flavorful for a chicken breast. It was also good to know that not all of the giant flattened fried chicken was created the same, because Hot Star was definitely interested in making the batter crispy.

Really, if you get the chance, just make sure you come with some others to ensure you don’t limit yourself to just one fried chicken. Otherwise, you will be plenty happy with Monga.

As you may have already realized based on a lot of the Street Food Spotlights I’ve been posting about, the Shilin Night Market in Taipei is one of the coolest places in the world to eat food. And yet, like some sort of off-balance iceberg, there’s a little more to share below the surface. There, you can find tanks of seafood and additional food options, plus get out of the heat for a little while. Down there is a place called Zhong Cheng Hao, which is all about the seafood.

I generally try to avoid seafood, but apparently the oyster omelette is pretty special to the night market and I just couldn’t not have it. But, we ordered ours with a little twist by adding shrimp. It came topped with some red sauce, which is really what added flavor to the thing and made it stand out from just a regular oyster and shrimp omelette. The sauce was sweet and spicy and almost made me forget that the texture of oysters creeps me way out.

But on top of that, we also ordered Keelung Tempura. “What is this?” you ask. Well, I asked the same questions to my Taiwanese friends and it was kind of hard to answer because Keelung is a city in Taiwan and not a type of fish. Yet, after some time on the internet we figured out the best English translation is “fish paste.” As far as calling it tempura, well it wasn’t like the kind of tempura batter you expect with Japanese food, but it was fried just as well. It had its own sauce, which coupled perfectly with the fish paste, because why wouldn’t it?

As far as the Shilin Night Market’s strange seafood goes, Zhong Cheng Hao sure seemed to do a good job of making it work. And while I probably will never clamor for oyster omelettes or Keelung tempura, Zhong Cheng Hao was a hell of an experience that I would recommend to anyone.

Sometimes the world feels dominated by American chain restaurants. It seems that anywhere you go you can find McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway and KFC. Yet, we are not the only ones pushing our fast food abroad, as evidenced by MOS Burger. MOS Burger is a Japanese fast food burger spot that I was a pretty big fan of when I was living in Japan, and I was so happy to find that it is also available in Taiwan (as well as a number of other Asian countries, and even Australia) that I had to have some.

Thus, I paid MOS Burger a visit to try two very different burgers. The first was their breakfast burger, which was topped with a fried egg and bacon, as well as lettuce and tomato that I made sure to order without. Unfortunately, this did not live up to my memories, as it was pretty plain and the burger was kind of rubbery. I had always remembered MOS Burger to be a step above the rest of fast food, but this was not.

Undaunted, I then went for the rice burger. I got a normal patty again with teriyaki sauce and an egg, but in the bun made primarily of rice (with barley and millet in there as well). Now this brought back memories of old. The burger just seemed to work better with the rice patty, which came served in special wrapper to allow me to eat the burger without the bun falling apart. Also, rice as a bun is just awesome, especially when you consider MOS Burger has been doing this for decades while the rest of the world seems to have recently realized all the different foods that can be used for buns.

So, while my MOS Burger experience started low, the rice bun brought it back up. MOS Burger is still unquestionably fast food and while that may not be for everyone, it worked just fine for me.

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.

The scallion pancake may be one of the greatest culinary creations of the Far East. It comes in different forms, but is delicious on its own and also makes up the base of the beef rolls that are super popular in authentic Chinese restaurants around LA. But perhaps the greatest take on the scallion pancake can be found at the Shilin Night Market in Taipei, Taiwan.

Here, the scallion pancake is the more flaky variety, but starts like all others on a griddle with some oil. After that, it takes a turn towards greatness by adding a fried egg. In itself this is not so revolutionary because scallion pancakes with eggs have existed for about as long as scallion pancakes. What’s big here is the addition of a slice of cheese. Yes, cheese!

As with nearly every dish, cheese can always make it better, but what is more significant is that cheese is simply not an ingredient in really any traditional Asian dishes. Therefore, embracing cheese as a complement to something traditional as opposed to relegating it to Western-style food is pretty fantastic. With a touch of spicy sauce, this was truly a transcendent bit of street food.

Oysters are weirdly popular in Taipei. Or so I think. All I know is that in two nights there I ate more oysters than I ever intended to in my whole life. One of those was in the form of some oyster noodle soup (also known as oyster vermicelli) at the Shilin Night Market, which happens every night and presumably the soup is always there being served by the same lady out of a cart as well.

So what is oyster noodle soup? It’s literally a thick broth with salty flavor, stringy vermicelli noodles and chunks of oyster. The trouble is that I really don’t understand oyster. It tastes like pretty much nothing and has the texture of something that would come out of my nose. Therefore, it’s gotta be surrounded by some really good stuff. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t feeling the soup as really good stuff. Maybe it was because it was the middle of summer and I usually feel like soup is better for cold weather or because it’s just better as a drunk food. Or…because there was just too much other good stuff at the Shilin Night Market. Whatever the case, this is one street food I could have walked by with no issue.

I often find it amazing how universal sausage is. It seems like every culture has its own version of tube meat, like all humans have some sort of collective conscience that led us to grind up meat and stuff it inside of an intestine. And while you might think that Taiwanese sausage would basically be the same as Chinese Sausage, you would be wrong.

Like all the rest of the street food I ate in Taipei, I had Taiwanese Sausage at the Shilin Night Market. I was shocked to find the sausage looked more like a kielbasa than a shriveled up log. It was cooked on a charcoal grill like I would have cooked up bratwurst back at home. It was juicy and not nearly as sweet as I would have guessed, and both were probably due to it not being dried out like Chinese Sausage is.

Like Chinese Sausage, it was all sliced up for you, but instead of being served as a part of a larger dish, the Taiwanese Sausage is meant to stand on its own. Well, almost. You see, in the bag of sliced up sausages was also slices of raw garlic. The idea is that you take a slice of each in each bite, which is insane because raw garlic is weirdly spicy and expectedly intense. And yet, somehow it all just works in a delicious way. A visit to Taiwan would be incomplete without some of this sausage.

You may recall that a few years back I paid a visit to Shanghai and had some of their stinky tofu (aka chou doufu in Mandarin). At that time it was pretty much the only variety of stinky tofu I really knew of because I had spent a year living in that city. Stinky tofu, however, seems to come in as many flavors as bread or pasta, with Taiwan claiming one of its own.

I tracked down Taiwanese stinky tofu at the Shilin Night Market in Taipei, which happens literally every night. It’s immediately apparent why the stinky tofu here is different from that of Shanghai. First off, you don’t smell if from nearly a mile away. This is probably due to a different fermentation process, but also because it is cooked by deep frying. It’s then tossed into a bag for eating purposes with a semi-sweet sauce, allowing the tofu to soak up the sauce flavor, while also changing the texture of the tofu.

The result is something entirely different, with a distinct sponge-like texture and more complex overall flavor than that of Shanghai. I can’t say which is better, especially considering how long it has been since I have had the Shanghai variety, but each is very distinct and absolutely worth trying. That may sound crazy coming from an unvegan, but I couldn’t be more confident in stating it.