Beef Noodle Soup from Shilin Night Market - $~1.40

Shilin, Taipei, Taiwan

Happy 2010 everyone, just back from a 3 week long trip around Taiwan. Well, 3 weeks ago, but I only have time to post now.

I’ve taken over 100 shots of the stuff I ate there, so I’ll probably be posting for weeks to come. I also probably won’t be as descriptive as before, and instead go ahead with mostly photos and accompanying captions. Since I don’t speak a word of Mandarin I should say now that I’ll be making up the names for most of the dishes. Also, I never took note of how much each and every dish were so guesstimates are all you’re gonna get. You’re welcome. Also, all the shots were taken using only a point and shoot. It may be a spectacular camera my S90, but with little to no photographic forethought before each shot, it can only do so much, so excuse the quality and lack of artistic flare.

We start off at Shilin Night Market, one of the more famous night markets in Taiwan. We went there on our very first night in Taiwan, but ended up there on our final night in Taiwan as well so expect to see more from this place much later on.

Here we have Beef Noodle Soup, from one of the many noodle stalls within the night market. More specifically, it’s beef chunks, tripe and stomach. You get to pick what type of noodle you want, for example egg noodles, rice noodles, vermicelli, etc. Nothing incredibly special about this. The price is between $1-1.40.

This is what my friend ate, rice with beef stew. Pretty unappetizing IMO. The beef stew was not all meat, half of it was fat. It’s not much of a complete meal, probably more of a snack or space filler or a deal closer and as such only costs about $0.60 maybe? I noticed it was really glistening with oil so I went to look for where this was prepared, and found the source. This is what the “stew” looks like. Ugh.. however I discover later that it’s sold all over Taiwan, so it must be a well known Taiwanese dish, and now I kinda regret not trying it.

Since I took a few more shots that night, I’ll include them in this post. It’s the only time you’ll see SLR shots of food, as it was the first day and I was excited enough to want to shoot everything  with the SLR.

The drink was a letdown, I think it’s supposed to be primarily kumquat juice with a bit of herbal tea and jelly. Well I only tasted the kumquat which is fine, but the jelly had no taste at all, yet it is served in pretty big bite-sized chunks. So when I was done with the drink I had about over a quarter cup of jelly with absolutely no taste. Probably cost me around $0.30 - $0.60.

The next you see someone frying vegetables and Ho Chien, or omelette with oysters which I believe is Hokkien. I never sampled it in Taiwan, cos from the many times I’ve seen   it cooked, I wasn’t really in the mood to. One thing I noticed about Taiwanese cooking, it’s oily as hell. I mean ridiculously oily. Like 7 layers of paper towel under this dish and it’d still soak right thru oily. But anyways we get this dish here in Malaysia so I’ll do a follow up one day.

Finally the last pic shows someone grilling Taiwanese pork sausages. These are available EVERYWHERE but I only ate this later on in the trip and not here where I took the pic, so I’ll post about it later.

The night isn’t even over yet, after this we walked on and found some more stuff to eat, but I’ll talk about that in another post.

See, told you I’d keep it short didn’t I?

Crispy Roasted Pork from TME - $5.57

Ground Floor, Hartamas Shopping Center, Plaza Damas

 

My friend opened a new restaurant called The Meat Experts. He’s a bit of a porker himself so I think he’s found his calling. This may come as a surprise to most but little known fact, they mostly deal with meat. I know, the name totally threw me off the first time too.

I decided to drop by and have a sample. About 40 dishes to choose from, nice average  number. I went for one of the cheaper dishes, Crispy Roasted Pork.  This is his gourmet-ed take on what is normally a chinese style of preparing pork (dry roasted till the skin is crispy). It’s usually just the pork, you see. Here you get mash and roasted veges. So gourmet.

The addition of garlic in the meat was great, the pork wasn’t too dry or over-roasted. In fact, some bits of the skin weren’t too crispy, which I’m guessing is a result of not being roasted for long enough? But again the meat itself was pretty excellent, a lot of porky goodness and no pork stench (you get that sometimes).

The vegetables were quite good, not too mushy, altho it was slightly over oiled but then again it’s olive oil so I’m not complaining. The mash was nothing to write home about, but was a nice balance to the other 2 roasts.

All in all, I think quite worth the money… and I promised to go back sometime again to check out the other dishes.

Spare Ribs from Jim 'n Nick's BBQ - $20.50

1908 11th Avenue South, Birmingham, AL - (205)320-1060

I tried to order their popular baby back ribs, but they were sold out. Instead, I ordered their spare ribs, and I definitely wasn't let down.

They're everything you'd want from ribs - tender and flavorful. I wish more places would follow suit with the pickles, but I'm pretty sure that's just a southern touch.

Cemitas Atomica from Cemitas Pueblas - $9.00

3619 West North Avenue, Chicago, IL - (773) 772-8435

"Sesame seed bread layered with avocado, choice of meat, adobo chipotle peppers, fresh Oaxacan cheese and papalo (seasonal)."

For the meat, we chose the Atomica version which includes Milanesa (breaded beef fillet), Carne Enchilada (thin sheet of pork coated with chili pepper), and Jamon (a Spanish ham).

The sandwich was good, but in my opinion, over-hyped and over-priced, just because it was featured on the show Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives. Still, this Pueblan sandwich is supposedly unique to this single restaurant in the entire Chicagoland area so it could be worth checking out.

Crispy Pork from Cafe Uno - $1.50

1 Bonifacio St, Vigan City, Philippines

This is my first in a series of Philippine posts, of food I had during my 2 week trip to Philippines end of last year.

This was the first meal we had since landing in Philippines and taking a 10 hour bus ride to Vigan from Angeles City, with the last meal before this being a crappy eggs benedict from Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, about 14-15 hours before.

I’ll confess, I forgot the name and price of the dish. It IS essentially crispy pork but I don’t remember the Filipino name. The closest I’ve come to via googling is Lechon Kawali. But the price is accurate to about USD0.40 so it’s a fair estimate on my behalf.

First thing to note about Filipino food, it’s very similar to Malay / Chinese cuisine. This is no exception, reminding me very much of Chinese Roast Pork, only this is cut into chunks before roasting. I liked it, not too much seasoning so you get to enjoy all the porkiness.

We also ordered a serving of fish, I really don’t remember the name, and the price is around the vicinity of $1.50 as well. Because I have no idea what it is, I didn’t include it into the topic of this post, but here’s a picture.  It was okay, standard fare, fried fish cuts, with sauce that was starchy and quite flavourless, maybe that’s why it also came with pickled vegetables mixed with a fermented sauce, I don’t know what it was but it tasted incredibly similar to a Malaysian sauce called Cincalok, which is basically fermented shrimp.

Another thing to note about the Filipino diet, they eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Also, most of their dishes (the flavours of Philippines, if you will) are a little too much for foreigners of the non-asian kind to handle, and a lot of the locals told me stories about how some of the Caucasian visitors would order a lot thinking they are adventurous, and when it comes some of them would only eat white rice, perhaps picking on the egg or vegetable dish only, cos the other dishes are too overwhelming. I can picture it, and have nothing to say except to shake my head at the thought.

Sampler Platter from Uncle Bub's - $16.99

132 South Cass Avenue, Westmont, IL - (630)493-9000

The sampler platter comes with a combination of 3 BBQ back ribs, pulled pork, BBQ sliced beef brisket, ribtips, and BBQ chicken along with your choice of two side dishes. The side dishes we chose were the fried mac & cheese, and the chili.

Without trying to hype this place up, this is perhaps the best BBQ I've ever had. The sauce has this very unique flavor that I can only describe as "pruney." Prunes in BBQ may sound gross, but man, I was tempted to swig that stuff straight from the bottle.

Everything that came with the sampler platter was fantastic with the exception of the ribtips and the chicken. The ribtips were very tough and difficult to eat around the cartilage, and the chicken dried out quickly (I covered up the chicken problem the best I could by dousing it in more pruney goodness).

I read other reviews saying the service was terrible, but you pay at the counter before you receive your food so I don't think this is the type of place where you're expected to tip.

Pepper-Crusted Pork Chop from TGI Friday's - $9.99

650 South College Avenue, Newark, DE - (302)737-3700

When a chunk of meat is tough as nails, then no matter how well it's marinated or spiced, it's still going to suck. That was the case with this dish. I can't even think of anything else to say about the dish because I can't get passed the rock hard texture.

Generally speaking, I think TGI Friday's does a good job with cooking the meat so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say this is probably a fluke. Anyway, on the brighter side of things, both the mashed potatoes and the onion rings were pretty good.

New Jersey Style Dog from Johnnie's Dog House - $3.50

3401 Concord Pike, Wilmington, DE - (302)477-1440

I'm not familiar with the New Jersey style hot dog, so here's what wiki said about it:

"In the case of New Jersey's potato dog, diced and stewed potatoes are combined with brown mustard and served on spicy brand hot dog. A variant on this (particularly in the Trenton area) is also known as the "Italian hot dog", which features all of the above ingredients, with grilled onions and peppers, and served on a long, crusty roll. The most common brands of spicy hot dogs used are Sabrett's or Best's, both of which are NJ companies."

It appears that the one that Johnnie's is trying to imitate is the New Jersey Italian hot dog since this one is composed of grilled potatoes, peppers, and onions. Everything on this hot dog SEEMS like a good idea, but the end result is fairly bland. Perhaps Johnnie's isn't making it correctly or perhaps the actual Jersey dog is bland. Either way, I won't be ordering this particular dog again.



NOTE: I've been on vacation the past few days so I'll be backdating a few posts to make up for lost time.

Half-Rack Baby Rack Ribs from TGI Friday's

650 South College Avenue, Newark, DE - (302)737-3700

I'm feeling lazy today, so I'm ganking the description from the fridays.com site:

"A half–rack of tender baby back pork ribs fire–grilled, glazed with your choice of original or new Tennessee BBQ sauce from the Grand Champion of the Jack Daniel's World Championship Invitational Barbeque. Topped with onion rings, served with fries and a side of barbecue sauce."

Now that I'm reading the description, I don't recall getting a choice of BBQ sauce so I'm not sure which one I tried. I didn't try any of the sauce provided to me on the side either since I was sharing these with my dog and I didn't want him to get the carpet messy. The small amount of sauce that was already drizzled over the ribs leaned on the sweeter side with hardly any tang. The ribs could've stood to be a bit more tender, but they were still yummy to my tummy.

Just like the fried Oreos I recently posted, the fries and onion rings became a bit soggy by the time I arrived home. Both of these taste much better while they still have their crispiness so I recommend you eat those first.

Texas Tommy from Johnnie's Dog House - $3.50

3401 Concord Pike, Wilmington, DE - (302)477-1440

The Texas Tommy is a hot dog wrapped in bacon, then deep-fried and finally topped with cheese.

This hot dog is good, but I feel like it has potential to be SPECTACULAR if it has a little something extra. Maybe chili? Maybe onion rings? I don't know. Mostly, it tastes like a solid foundation for something even better.

One thing's for certain though - this experience has taught me that EVERYTHING should be wrapped in bacon.... starting with my toothbrush.

Spare Ribs from Oxford Farmer's Market - $3.99

193 Limestone Road, Oxford, PA - (717)283-5183

There's a lot of things I don't understand about the Amish. Like, how come they have a phone number? How come they accept credit cards and have their shop air-conditioned and lit up with electricity? Aren't all these things against their beliefs?

Anyway, it doesn't surprise me that they have a reputation for good barbeque. And the BEST part is that it's all pretty cheap! The spare rib itself is $3.99 but you can get the combo for $6.75. The combo includes BBQ potatoes (picture below), coleslaw, a small bag of chips, a roll the size of my fist, and a drink.

Personally, I like my BBQ with more tang, but this was still a good find. The meat's texture was so tender that it fell right off the bone with a little bit of fork jabbing.

They also sell deserts for very cheap (the CD-sized pies were only $1), furniture, produce, ice cream, and soft pretzels (these were fantastic!), but unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of them.

My biggest complaints about the place are that 1) it's a bit hard to find since you have to drive through very rural areas and 2) there's nowhere to sit to eat your food, but both of these complaints have nothing to do with the quality of the food. All in all, I was happy to try Amish barbeque, but the location is too far away (40 min drive for me) to make it worth the effort to get their food again.

XXL Ribs from Famous Dave's - $22.99

100 West Main Street, Christiana, DE - 302-737-0300

Since this was my first time at Famous Dave's, I decided to go with their "Award-Winning" St. Louis style ribs. After all, if their best can't impress me, why bother with anything else?

The description on the menu is: "Hand-rubbed with Dave's secret blend of tongue-tingling spices and pit-smoked for 3-4 hours over a smoldering sweet hickory fire. Then they're slathered with sauce and flame-kissed to seal in the flavor and caramelize the sauce for just a touch of crispiness. Served with corn bread muffin, corn-on-the-cob, and your choice of two sides."

The XXL Ribs, aka the "Big Slab" is the serving size with 12 bones. The ribs were good, but the meat didn't really fall off the bones like they do on spectacular ribs. As for the sides, the fries were soggy, the mashed potatoes were good, and the corn on the cob and the cornbread muffin are standard.

Baby Back Ribs from Balan's Produce - $18.00

851 Old Baltimore Pike, Newark, DE - (302)292-2606

Here's the baby back ribs I spoke of yesterday. As you can see from the shininess, these suckers are soaking in BBQ sauce. The sauce is a lot thinner than most BBQ sauces I'm used to - I'd say even thinner than A1. Also, I didn't detect any tang that I usually do with BBQ sauces either. The best comparison I can make right now is the sauce that gets coated over orange-flavored chicken.

This particular batch was charred a bit more than I would've liked, so they were not quite fall-right-off-the-bone tender but they were still fairly tender. As with the pulled pork sandwich (pictured in the back), these ribs carry the same smokey flavor, perhaps even moreso because of the slight overcooking.

Overall, these ribs were a great add-on to one of the smaller sandwiches and the portion is large enough to split with two or three other people who also order a sandwich.

Chili Cheese Dog from Dairy Queen - $2.09

200 Buckley Blvd, Bear, DE - (302)328-2200

Despite my recent complaints about Dairy Queen, there's a strong possibility that I'll end up going back again. Why? For the chili cheese dog.

Admittedly, it's nothing special - regular bun, regular hot dog, plain chili and a slice of American cheese. But it's priced decently, it's fairly clean, and it's the only place around here where I can find one.