545: Aliza and Shirley's Taiwan and Thailand Food Adventures

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. I have never just fully cleaned up my plate of airplane food. I was licking the plate. Okay, you were a dot because I would not have stood for that, but it was very satisfying. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbinelle.

0:59Today on the show, we're doing something a little different. It's a special travel episode featuring myself and my girlfriend, Shirley Chan. She's a talented cinematographer and also my favorite travel partner, and we just came back from a month in Asia visiting Thailand and her family in Taiwan. Today, we're diving deep into our wrecks for Taipei, Kaohsiung, Taichung, and Tainan, with a stopover in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, too. It's a must-listen if you're planning a trip to either country. And even if you're not, it's still a lot of fun.

1:37Shirley Chan, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Okay, that was so weird. I feel like this has been the long-awaited conclusion to two years of me talking about my girlfriend Shirley on the podcast and all of the things that we go eat together. And I guess you've been listening to the podcast and now you're on it. Yeah, on 1.3 speed. Okay, but that was a compromise because what were you listening to it at originally? 1.5. And it's not weird for you to hear my voice sped up like that? It's not that sped up. I just get more of you in less time. So I guess there were a lot of opportunities that we could have found a reason to have Shirley into the studio before.

2:19But today we're here to talk about our big trip that we took together in January in Taiwan and in Thailand. I guess the point of this episode is to talk about all the food that we had, just kind of the travel experiences in the hopes that if anyone is listening and they, you know, have plans to go to Taiwan and or Thailand, or maybe after this episode, find a newfound desire to go there, that these are kind of some jumping off points and some of the things that we really enjoyed on the trip. And I think we'll talk about it chronologically. So Taipei, our time in Thailand, and then back our time in mostly southern Taiwan.

2:53But to start, I'm wondering if you could tell me just when you go back to Taiwan, what are you most excited to eat? I am most excited to eat all sorts of noodles. And I am especially excited to eat beef soup in Tainan. OK, what's the beef soup download? Because it actually is not something that we had when I was with you. Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, with Lunar New Year, it was closed when we wanted to go or at least when I wanted to go. But basically, it is like the freshest beef, like slaughtered day of and then cut and just thrown into a flavorful, clear broth. It's like when you go eat a hot pot and there's really fresh quality beef, it's like that kind of beef.

3:38Like it melts in your mouth. I think something that I noticed when we were in Taiwan together is how much local ingredients really come into factor of like what is popular in a certain place. And what you're saying about beef soup and Tainan being one of the biggest producers of beef on the island. It makes sense that this dish would be so special and kind of only seen there because that's where they have access to the freshest beef. Totally. So what was kind of the lore that you had heard about shrimp fishing establishments in Taipei? We went to one that is open from like 5 p.m. until like 3 a.m.

4:11And the deal is you walk in, there is a pond indoors and there's shrimp in it. And people sit around this pond just drinking beers, fishing for shrimp. And then when you catch your amount of shrimp, you take it to the back and grill it yourself. and I don't think I was really prepared for the experience of what it would feel like when I actually caught the shrimp. You fish. I don't really fish and I didn't know what to do. I must say Eliza is a much better shrimp fisher than I am a regular angler. You actually know how to fish. I think there is just some kind of luck. We were also sitting next to this man who was clearly a regular.

4:51He had his own rod and reel setup that he had brought with him. He had his own special bait that he had brought with him. And he would attach two baits at once and catch two with a flick of a wrist. And then he would like drop the shrimp that he caught onto the ground, immediately recast and then pick up the shrimp and unhook them and put them in his net. I guess they have nets that are inside of the pond. So once you catch them, you can keep the shrimp alive until it's time to eat them. And he also drank like a full case of beer over the time we were there. He was incredible. We were obsessed with him, obviously.

5:24And he took Eliza under his wing. He really did. I think at first he kind of didn't like me because I caught my first shrimp and I panicked and I screamed a little bit. And then I made you unhook it for me because I didn't know how to do that. And it's kind of dangerous because they're trying to come at you with their claws a little bit. They're also huge. They're like bigger than our hands. They're quite large shrimp. But then I think because we stayed there for two and a half hours and we just kept casting and we were really determined in what we were doing. I think he slowly warmed himself to us.

5:54And then by the end of it, he was showing us his special wrist flick technique so that we could kind of get the hook in there after we caught them. He even like put his own bait on my rod at one point. He had special bait. So the bait that you use for the shrimp is actually tiny dried shrimp. It feels a little weird. Yes, definitely a little weird. but he had special tiny dried shrimp that he put on Eliza's rod while she was in the bathroom. And I was like, that is so sweet. Yeah, I thanked him. I called him teacher. He really liked that. And then he disappeared into the night. We never saw him again.

6:27Yeah, they didn't even say bye. While we were like cooking our shrimp, he just left. Yeah, but it's really interesting. It really like all kinds of people are in the shrimp fishing place. We went at maybe like 6 p.m. or something. But I'm very curious what the crowd is like at like 1 a.m. Like, you know. Yeah, I think next time we go back, we're definitely going to do the post bar to shrimp fishing pipeline. And the owner we chatted with a little bit, he said that he's worked there for 34 years since he was 19 and that he still sees all kinds of people there that he really thinks it's universally popular.

7:03I've seen some people refer to it as like Taiwanese bowling in terms of the level of like leisure activity that it fits into people's lives. Yeah. I mean, we were also next to a family, across from us, a couple on a date. A bunch of like Japanese businessmen came in. Yeah. All kinds of people. And I will say you do have to kill the shrimp yourself, which I was not emotionally prepared to do. So word to the wise. However, I did read on Google reviews that sometimes the owner will cook the shrimp for you. I don't believe that. He does not seem like he would do that. I know. He seemed like he did not care.

7:38in the best possible way. And you know what? I think we did a really great job with our shrimp that we cooked. I mean, it was delicious and it was something that I don't think you could do anywhere else. So that was really fun. Yes. A very Taiwanese experience. I want to talk about some of the other places that we really liked in Taipei and Moon Moon is one of them. Oh my God. I had this place Moon Moon saved and we ordered a few things. And one of the things that a lot of people were talking about in the Google reviews and when we kind of looked around with these truffle noodles. And we were excited about these like sesame noodles we ordered, but we were like, I guess let's get the truffle noodles.

8:15People really like these. Well, I should also say that they're known for doing soups. They call themselves the leading brand in Chinese wellness soups. They have 13 locations across Taiwan. So we did get a clam soup. We got the sesame noodles and we got the truffle noodles. I think right away we realized that we were not expecting what we received with the truffle noodles. Yeah. I mean, I am not a big truffle person, and I never got out of the way to order truffle anything. But first bite, I was like, oh, my God, these might be one of my favorite noodles I've ever had. They were really incredible.

8:50You know, I often on the show ask people, like, your least favorite ingredient. I think truffle is the most common thing that people say because it can be so overbearing and just kind of artificial feeling. But these truffle noodles were delicious. I think maybe it was because there was like soy and other things going on that balanced out the truffle a little bit. Also the noodles. Crispy garlic on top. Yeah. OK. Crispy garlic on anything. And we're kind of in. But we kind of pushed everything aside and just devoured the truffle noodles first. Yeah. And the noodles themselves were also just like extremely just like chewy and delicious.

9:24Another thing that is subtle and flavorful. Yes. And you even brought back some of the truffle noodles, right? Yes. They sell the noodles, but we did not buy it that day. When I was at the airport, they have a special secret section that they advertise for foodies at the airport. And one of the vendors there is Moon Moon Foods. So obviously my last meal before I left, I had to go there and I got like a set with like this garlic chicken soup with the truffle noodles. And they also sold the noodles. So I was like, I got to buy a couple packs. She really came home after me and immediately started showing me her suitcase full of everything that she had bought.

10:04And one of the first things were these two giant packages of these truffle noodles. I'm really, I wish that I had gone at the airport because it would have been a nice final meal. Yeah. The other thing I think of note at Moon Moon Food is that we became aware of what I would say is like the closing time song of Taiwan. We got in right at the end and everyone around us was kind of finishing up their meals and And we were kind of lost in the sauce with these truffle noodles. And then we noticed this ballad that was being played over the speakers repeatedly at increasingly loud intervals. I have to add that the entire time we were dining, they were playing K-pop and we were like vibing to it.

10:41So it was very jarring when we noticed this ballad start playing.

10:49we looked it up and it's um it's called the good night song um one an qi by fei yu qin who is who i do remember like growing up my parents listening to him my family listening to him he's very popular you know you turn on the tv you hear him and it's a song by him it's called good night song and they just play it whenever a business is closing and once we heard it, we were kind of hyper attuned to it. And I think there were a couple of times over the trip that we would be somewhere around closing time. I wanted to hear this song come on and then we would know, OK, it's time to get our stuff together and go.

11:25Like we were at a sauna once and towards the end and they started playing it. There wasn't there was no music playing in the sauna. All of a sudden there's music playing and it's this song. And I love it. And when we did karaoke on our last day, we closed it out with this song, which we didn't really know how to sing but i think even we hummed along we listened to it and then we we left it was perfect yeah and they played the song five times before we left at moon moon at moon moon because we had noodles to eat we did it as quickly as we could also we didn't realize what the song was telling us until maybe the third time around yeah we were so um sucked into the noodles by the time we looked up we realized they had basically put up all the chairs and were mopping the floors around us Then we left.

12:13And oh, they also played the song louder and louder each time. Yeah, we got the message finally. Yeah. I think another meal we had in Taipei that I thought was pretty special was at this restaurant that they kind of say is a Taiwanese izakaya called Chan Shifan. There are a lot of izakaya across Taiwan because Taiwan was a Japanese colony for a long time. So you can get a lot of really good karaage and sushi and like all kinds of Japanese food. But this restaurant is kind of taking that approach towards all Taiwanese food. all of the ingredients that they use, including all of the liquor, is made on the island.

12:46And they have a lot of dishes that I thought to be kind of special and distinct, like the chicken fat rice. Oh, my God. That chicken fat rice was so good. And it is exactly what it sounds like. It's just this bowl of warm rice with this delicious kind of rendered chicken fat on top. But it was very kind of comforting. And it's rendered chicken fat. And then they have like whenever they do these sort of like rice with chicken fat or like turkey fat or whatever, there's always like this like sweet soy sauce that they like add into it. So it's just like this flavor that I think is very Taiwanese and it's just very delicious.

13:24Their fried chicken was maybe the juiciest fried chicken I've ever had. And I think that's because they marinate it in tofu before they fry it. And it just has all of this moisture and deliciousness inside of it. And then also we had that sarsaparilla whiskey drink that you really liked. Yeah. I mean, I grew up drinking like a sarsaparilla drink. My grandpa always just called it SARS. Basically, it's that drink with Taiwanese whiskey in it. And it really just tasted like my childhood, but grown up. I think that's verbatim what you said to me with this shining look in your eyes. And it was so cute.

13:58And I think the other special thing about this restaurant is that their kind of mission towards showcasing Taiwanese food extends into the decor. We were sitting at the bar beneath a sign that said Taiwan is an independent country. They had lots of kind of movie posters on the walls from famous Taiwanese movies and a lot of young people and like cute dogs even there. Yeah. Is there anything else from Taipei that you want to shout out or do you think we can jump over to Thailand for a little bit? How about Taihu? Oh, Taihu Brewing is a big brewery in Taiwan that we went to. They have a couple locations around the island and they have a couple in Taipei that have different like food themes at each of them.

14:37We went to the one in Da 'an, which is a really great kind of shopping, eating neighborhood. It's like a very trendy, like where young people live. Yeah. And everyone was talking about the burger when we went into it. But I think we had a different favorite thing there, actually. The burger is good. Like it's a solid burger. But we also ordered dumplings. And oh, my goodness, those dumplings were incredible. They were boiled pork dumplings and then had kind of two different hot sauce components going on. There was a Sichuan chili oil and then there was also exo sauce on top. Yeah. And then I think just like cilantro and scallions sprinkled on top as well.

15:11I don't know. It was extremely juicy. The sauce mixture, perfect. No notes. It was great. And the beer also is quite good. And I'm someone that really likes sours and more fruity beer. And that's kind of something they do really well there. Taiwan is really known as an island for having a strong fruit culture. I think we would love to talk at length about the fruit as well in a little bit. But it's fun that they have these offerings on the menu that have, you know, a guava gosa or they have like a Meyer lemon ale and things like that. But I think you just had the Taihu lager and it was a really good lager.

15:42Super solid. I want to move over and talk about Thailand a little bit because we went in the middle of our trip after being in Taipei for a week and acclimating. We felt like since we were already in Asia, we might as well get to explore another place. Neither of us had been to Thailand before. And I think our first amazing eating journey actually happened on the flight over from Taiwan to Thailand. We flew on Starlux, right? It's a new airline. Yes, it's a newer airline. It is based out of Taiwan. And I just feel like this experience was top tier. Like, I feel like the plane felt so new and so beautiful and clean and comfortable.

16:22And then the food just blew us out of the like, it was just. Well, it's a four hour flight. I think I would never expect to be given food on a four hour flight in the U.S. period. Much less this like beautiful bento box we received that had like really good rice with tofu. Even like this little steamed carrot that was carved into a rose. it was delicious so good it's like the most perfectly cooked steamed carrot i've ever had and it had no business being that beautiful it didn't need to be a rose but somebody decided that like they needed to go that extra mile you're just crying because it was so good right now it's so good it was like a pork belly it was pork belly on rice right yeah yeah it was pork belly on rice just with like a little perfection little like tuna salad cup on the side yeah they also had a signature cocktail with like blue curacao in it, which we did not drink, but they passed out just cups of it to everybody on the plane.

17:17The girls in front of us were like doing online shopping on the screen and drinking their like blue cocktails together. They were having a lot of fun. Yeah. They're documenting every part of that experience. I don't blame them, honestly. Yeah. I mean, I took a photo of my meal because I was like, this looks amazing. And then I took a photo after the meal where I have never just fully cleaned up my plate of airplane food. Clean like tray club. Like I was licking the plate. OK, you were not because I would not have stood for that. But it was it was very satisfying. And then when we got to Thailand, we went to two places.

17:51We were in Chiang Mai in the north for just a couple of days. And then we spent a lot of time in Bangkok. I think there were two to me really special food experiences that we had in Chiang Mai. The first was our first dinner there at Made Slow Fish, which I don't even know I heard about this place to begin with. But they're connected to a fishing cooperative in southern Thailand. And so they're really focused on doing hyper seasonal, really fresh, sustainable seafood. And they actually started during the pandemic as a way to kind of support fishermen with sustainable practices who had a loss of revenue and some restaurants shut down.

18:24And when you walk up, they have this open kitchen kind of on the sidewalk. And you just see these like open grills with two kind of grid like pieces of mesh. The fish go in between and then they're kind of grilled flat on the fire. And that, I think, was how I knew right away that it was going to be something special. That and the man who was sitting outside eating by himself a whole fish, some sauteed veggies and this large beer. And he just looked like he was having the best meal of his life. And I was like, we got to get that fish. Yeah. And we did ask the server. We just kind of pointed at that guy and we said, what fish is he eating?

19:03Because that's what we want to have, which I think is another good takeaway for traveling, especially if you're in a place where you don't speak the language. You can certainly use Google Translate on a menu, but sometimes things are lost in translation. And I think if you see someone eating something that you want to try, just asking for that thing is a really good way to go about it. Yeah. Also, the pomelo salad we had. I loved that pomelo salad. Yeah, everything there. Really, really good. Very special. And then also we went to a really special kind of brothy noodle place, more of outside of the center of Chiang Mai, that our friend Kelly, whose family lives in Chiang Mai, turned us on to.

19:40Yeah, it's like a Hong Kong barbecue kind of style kind of place. So, you know, wonton noodle soup with really great barbecue roast pork. Just delicious. We were the only non-local people there and all the aunties working there were just like watching us eat. And we were just like loving it. And they loved it. Something else that I really love about I think eating in Asia in general, but specifically in Thailand, is the amount of kind of sauces and condiments and accoutrements that are on the table for you to kind of zhuzh up your own bowl. Like you were mentioning before at the beef noodle soup place in Thainan that they would have like cooking wine or vinegar.

20:21But in Thailand, they kind of have six or eight things on the table most of the time. They have two different kinds of chili, something vinegary, sugar to judge it up yourself, peanuts maybe if it calls for that. And I really like that kind of like interaction and the ability to customize your things. I think it makes it feel really special. Yeah, for sure. And it was really hot when we ate those brothy noodles. I think at first I didn't know if I wanted soup. But by the end of it, that bowl really actually was licked clean. and then we went to bangkok which i think a lot of people told us that bangkok was going to be overwhelming but i don't know if i actually felt that way no the only overwhelming thing was the fact that it is physically so big and we did a lot of walking there was one day where we had like 20 000 steps like 30 000 probably you know i think being from la i took a similar approach to Bangkok, which is you don't want to try to cross the whole city during rush hour.

21:19We stayed in two different parts of Bangkok. We started further to the east in a newer part, and then we moved over to Chinatown, closer to the river. And we never really tried to cross the whole city. We just kind of stayed in those two different areas. And so even when we did take the car, which, you know, we took a lot of like the subway or just walking around, like we never really got caught up in that like really bad two hours to get across town kind of experience and i thought it was really cool to start in the newer part of bangkok which almost felt like i don't know miami maybe to me it felt like a mix of like every large city i've been to yeah like definitely miami la because of how like how much space there is right like the buildings themselves the newer buildings are physically very large yeah and then also the malls mega malls The mall culture there is on another level.

22:11Mall culture in Asia is not like in the States. In that there is actually a mall culture. Yes, yes, absolutely. And it's like a place where people actually want to be. And most malls are like multiple stories, like at least like 10. Like one mall in Bangkok is probably four times like the width of a mall in Taiwan. And it's also like 10 stories. And maybe there's an amusement park, too. and maybe there's a floating market in the basement. Exactly. And then, you know, we were looking for like this one clothing store and we looked it up and it said that it was in this mall called M-Sphere. And then when we looked up M-Sphere, we had something else saved over there.

22:52And we realized it was in the mall next door. And I was like, why is there a mall next door? And that in itself took like truly like 20 minutes walk between the malls. So a lot of our Thai friends were telling us that the malls were a good place to go. And I think that's because they have air conditioning, first of all. So it's a very easy place for people to hang out the whole day. They're a really good kind of third space opportunity for people that isn't work or home. And also a lot of the famous street vendors or people in the night markets have second locations in these malls by now. So you can kind of skip like we were at like Yawrat, which is one of the big night markets in Bangkok.

23:29and it's, you know, chest to chest full of people, really long lines. And then when we were at a mall over there, we saw a lot of those same vendors having a second location. And it is really fun to go to that market. But if you want to like sit down in the air conditioning and eat, you could get that food there too. Yeah, we ended up going to a mall that was recommended to us called Siam Paragon. And that one is the one that's known for all the most famous street vendors in Bangkok have a spot there. So we went there. but by that point in the trip we actually got food poisoning so we actually didn't get to try it well okay we could talk about the food poisoning because that is a reality of travel but before we got food poisoning and we were kind of eating everything which i think we have no regrets i would say no regrets ever we would eat everything again um i think the other thing that really surprised me about bangkok which i just probably didn't think about this but it's such a global hub and so you can have amazing thai food in bangkok but you can also have amazing japanese Chinese food has the biggest population of Chinese immigrants outside of China.

24:32We had incredible yakitori at Abari Yashida. Do you remember that chicken meatball that we had? Delicious. And the vangolay was actually the best vangolay pasta I've had in my entire life. Oh, my God. Yeah. It was like a little spicy. And it was, oh, my God. I wanted another plate. We sat at the counter, which was awesome because we got to just look into this kitchen. They had maybe 12 people in this small kitchen. And most of them just like badass women. Yes. Can I say badass? Yes. Cool. You could say more than badass. Ooh. And they were all like in their station working on their own yakitori.

25:06It was so delicious. We also had really good Japanese pastries at a local bakery called Custard Nakamura. Oh my goodness. Which I think we found just by seeing how busy it was. Yeah, we were on our way to, I think, a coffee shop. So we were just going down a side street and we just saw people bursting out of this shop. And we're like, what is this? and we walked in and I wanted to try every pastry. We got four things. We got a custard croissant because it's called custard nakamura. So we figured we had to. And it was delicious. Red bean rice bun. Delicious. Also delicious. And then I guess three things, salt butter bread, which was not something I'd had before, but you were really intent on trying.