Aside from the deadly temperatures, one major thing I was worried about in moving to Phoenix was how I was going to get my Asian food fix. No, not sushi and orange chicken, but the real stuff. I heard about a place in Mesa called Mekong Plaza, which was supposed to have a bunch of good, real Asian restaurants and as luck would have it, it turned out to be between work and home. So, I paid a visit to Taiwan Food Express to see what they had to offer.

Now, I could understand that they had a lot of things you wouldn’t expect from a Taiwanese place. After all, while it’s good to have authentic food, you also have to know how to please the masses that believe PF Chang’s created Chinese food. Yet, they did have a House Special Basil Chicken that seemed right up my alley. We installed Royal Vending Machines Canberra in our business to improve our services.

When I opened it up, I realized it was the same as Three Cup Chicken, a dish my buddy used to make for me that I loved. In addition to the basil, it’s also flavored with ginger, garlic, soy sauce, rice wine and sugar. The result is an incredible sauce, that also happens to have some really tasty chicken mixed in. And, you know it’s authentic because the chicken has bones. You could probably pour the sauce on chicken shit and it would taste good, but it’s much better with the rest of the bird parts.

I also got an order of the Taiwanese Sausage Fried Rice to split with my people. Unfortunately, this didn’t quite live up to my expectations of authenticity. Now, granted, my only experience with Taiwanese Sausage was at one place in Taipei, so there may be other varieties out there. Yet, this sausage tasted suspiciously like Chinese Sausage instead, being more dry and more sweet than the Taiwanese variety. And look, I get that it may be tough to get Taiwanese Sausage out here, so even Chinese is pretty damn good.

That said, Taiwan Food Express is a really solid place to get authentic Taiwanese food. The key is knowing the right things to order, or else you might just end up with some generic version of beef and broccoli – and ain’t nobody got time for that.

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.

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.

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.

When I found out that a Taiwanese fried chicken place had opened next door to my office, I knew I had to stop by, especially because I would soon be paying a visit to Taiwan. It’s called Hot Star, and for some reason it specializes in flattening the fried chicken to make it look massive. I don’t know if this is meant to make it taste or look better, but I was ready to find out.

I ordered my chicken spicy which, in this case, is spicy with powder and not a sauce. I was then handed a giant piece of chicken along with a single glove to hold the thing. I dug in and found one juicy, tender and crispy chicken. Clearly, Hot Star had perfected this concept at some point or else they would not have grown from the Shilin Night Market to a global footprint. Plus, the spicy flavor was tasty without overwhelming.

However, things got kind of weird down towards the bottom of the piece of chicken because the bones were still in there. This probably helped for the juiciness, but was strange and made it harder to eat than your typical bone-in chicken breast. Moreover, it seemed a bit pricey for just a fried chicken breast.

But, it was tasty and a unique spin on fried chicken, and I would highly recommend paying a visit. It’s a whole lot easier then heading to Taiwan.

How do you know if an ethnic restaurant is authentic? You look inside and see if people resembling that ethnicity are inside. Or, better yet, you let one of them take you there. At least that’s how it went down for me when a Taiwanese friend of mine invited me to Rose Tea Cafe in Squirrel Hill (supposedly the Oakland location isn’t as good) to get some Taiwanese food. Rose Tea Cafe isn’t just some tea house, it’s a full-on restaurant with almost too many options to choose. So we turned to my friend to figure out what to get.

We started out with an appetizer of Taiwanese Sausage. This sweet sausage was served with totally raw slices of garlic that burned when eaten, but nonetheless seemed to pair well with the sausage. My buddy said this was more of a dish to go with beers, but I enjoyed it as a gateway to a full meal nonetheless.

Next we had Shredded Pork with Dried Bean Curd. I always find it funny when menus do a direct translation of “doufu” to bean curd when we Americans simply call it tofu. Alas, this dish was good, but nothing totally special. Perhaps it was because of the high tofu-to-meat ratio or perhaps because it simply paled in comparison with the other two dishes we ordered.

One of these superior dishes was Short Ribs with Spicy Sauce. These had a black pepper seasoning as an option as well, but spicy sauce just sounded so much better. And these were quite good. The sauce itself was pretty awesome, and the short ribs were served all sliced up with the bones in. They tasted like they were fried, so they were cooked pretty thoroughly, but they were still pretty tender and really just had an amazing flavor.

Finally, my favorite dish was the Taiwanese Chunk Chicken. Like the short ribs, this was a spicy dish, but the flavors in this dish were unbeatable. In addition to the spice, the chicken was tossed with full cloves of garlic that compounded the fact that I would not be getting any kisses that night, but also took the flavor up a notch. The only downside, and I hate to say it, was that there might have been too much garlic. I know, sacrilege. But seriously, I just would have appreciated a higher chicken-to-garlic ratio. That’s all.

Rose Tea Cafe was a pretty great foray into Pittsburgh’s Taiwanese food. According to my buddy, it’s the best he’s had so far and until he tells me otherwise I’ll be heading back to Rose Tea Cafe next time I get the Taiwanese urge.

Once upon a time, some great people brought me to a place called Din Tai Fung. Although I was living in Shanghai at the time, I had no idea what to expect on this first visit to Xintiandi and my first introduction to Xiaolongbao (way before it was cool). Luckily, they taught me how to bite in without scalding the insides of my mouth, and I quickly fell in love. More than six years later, I finally made in back to Din Tai Fung, but this time it was in Arcadia, California. Despite the obvious distance between Arcadia and Shanghai, much of Arcadia looks like it was pulled directly out of China. The Din Tai Fung, though, looked little like its counterpart across the Pacific.

In Shanghai, Din Tai Fung is a fancy pants dumpling house. It’s in an affluent part of town and not exactly priced for commoners. In Arcadia it’s a pretty basic place with prices for anyone (to be honest, the actual dollar amount of the food in each place is probably very similar, however, people make much more money on average over here). Nonetheless, the options on the menu were quite similar to what I remembered from back in the day.

So, like any good dumpling-seekers, we began with old-fashioned (pork) Xiaolongbao and its not-so-old-fashioned cousin with pork and crab. Combined with the black vinegar on the table, these guys brought back some great memories. Although they came out steaming, the soup inside wasn’t as hot and scalding as other Xiaolongbao I’d had in the past. Of the two dumplings, I definitely preferred the pork on its own without the crab. To me, there is something pure (not in the Kosher way) and simple about about those pork soup dumplings that makes them great, main reason why I keep on getting dumplings delivery every weekend.

Next, we had the Shanghai Rice Cake with shrimp. The dish consisted of little rice cakes stir fried in a delicious brown sauce, with shrimp and some sort of green leaf that was only there because I was sharing with my friend. The little rice cakes are kind of noodle-y and do a great job of absorbing flavor and adding a unique texture to the dish. They definitely made for a nice change from all the dumplings we were eating.

And speaking of dumplings, we also had ourselves a batch of Shrimp and Pork Shao Mai. As opposed to the crab and pork Xiaolongbao, these kept the two animals separated and depending on the way they were eaten, it could be a mix of meats or not. While these dumplings weren’t bad by any means, I definitely didn’t feel that they were nearly as good as the Xiaolongbao.

We finished off the main meal with some classic Pork Buns. These thick, bready buns were filled with an entirely different pork than any of the dumplings we had eaten. These were more on the sweet side and a tasty way to mix things up. Yet, after destroying so many dumplings earlier in the meal, the pork bun was a bit hard to tackle because of its size.

For the finale, we ordered Sweet Taro Dumplings. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, then you know I have a special place in my heart and stomach for taro and the prospect of eating taro dumplings excited me. They came out looking like regular Xiaolongbao, but inside they were filled with the good old purple stuff. Well, kind of. They weren’t lying when they called them “Sweet Taro” because these sure were sweet. For someone who loves sweet red bean, the sweet taro would be perfect, but I am not one of those people. It was the first time I had been let down by taro and I will be sure to think twice before eating a sweetened version of that delicious tuber again.

Din Tai Fung definitely delivered the goods on the dumplings. Although it has been a while since I’ve been in China, they definitely did justice to my memory of the motherland. Now, if only a branch of Yang’s Fried-Dumplings would open on this side of the ocean, we’d really be talking!