We started off our morning with riding the Maokong Gondola to visit the teahouses in the mountains. We walked around and strolled for a while in the hot heat until we found some teahouses open.

We visited the Maolan Tea House. It was so breathtakingly beautiful, especially on the inside. The water fountain with the rocks gave the background noise of running water. The cute little bridge and water stream with rocks as steps can’t get any cuter and more picturesque to the outdoors. You just gotta look at the pictures!

Our little tea room felt secluded and private yet giving us a look to the outside at the cute bridge.

Sitting on comfortable cushions with our shoes off and in the AC was a relaxing time while sipping on tea and eating yummy food.

We got the Maokong Guanyin tea to try, which tasted very good and light. It was a type of oolong tea. We ended up getting a bag of that tea leaf at a tea store in the city later on too!

For foods (because we were already starving), we got the tea smoked chicken. It sounded different from the kind of chicken we eat. It was served with cucumber and pea sprouts and a dipping sauce. The chicken was amazing. It was so tender, so stupidly flavorful and juicy and smokey. It was DELICIOUS!

Katsu salad white water snowflake. OMG, I can’t believe I forgot to take a picture of this!! I don’t know how, I was so sure I did but it’s not in my camera. It was long green shoots of stems, very crunchy and light. Mild flavor. Had pieces of sliced pork belly in there that gave the vegetable the flavor I think. It was good. Even I ate a lot of it for a vegetable.

We waited about 1.5hr for our table at Din Tai Fung. We went to the original dine in location that is opposite of the original original location that now serves only takeout. You first wait in line to get a number, which will tell you approximately how long the wait is. Luckily, we didn’t have to wait in line to get a number; just wait 1.5 for our table. Which we spent checking out the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.

Service was very friendly and attentive. They kept refilling our hot teas constantly. Everyone was very nice and courteous. When I kept adding more orders of savory, they purposely pushed back our desserts so that they wouldn’t be out of order. Very thoughtful!!

Hot and sour soup (spicy). This was decently good. We just got a size small to share. There was a lot of strongly tofu in it. I wish there were more ground pork. The soup was perfectly goopy. There were plenty of toppings (except the pork).

Pork Xiao Long Bao. We got 3 total orders of this. At first just two, but I wanted more. It was so good and so much cheaper than in America! It was about $8 USD for 10 here in Taipei. That’s old DTF pricing!!!

Steamed pork and shrimp dumpling. Vince wanted to try this and he liked it. Actually, this is his first time eating DTF fresh as dine in and he was blown away. There was a lot of soup in these so I appreciated that. The shrimp added an extra nice soft crunch chew.

Steamed sticky rice and ground pork shao mai. He was curious about this too and I personally didn’t think it was that good. It was filled with sticky rice and I didn’t get much ground pork from it. Carb on carb – wasteee of stomach space for me while on vacation!!!!!

We got two different dessert buns. They were both so cute and so fluffy looking and both soooo good!

Mini golden lava buns. These are the best of the whole trip! More creamy and salty eggy!! I was so glad we got them. Look at that ooze….. Each order comes out as two buns so it was perfect for us to each eat one.

Mini sesame buns. This was delicious! You can order between cold or hot. We got hot and it was just so pungent with black sesame.

Just a few doors down is a brewery that Vince wanted to check out called Learn Bar. He got a flight of 6 beers; most of which had tea flavored components. The vibe was very chill, classy and relaxing.

Lastly, we walked to the nearest Chun Shui Tang so that I can taste boba milk tea from the company that supposedly invented boba milk tea. Apparently, they created that concept that the combination of milk with teas shaken up using cocktail shakers and adding toppings such as pearls.

The difference between fresh milk tea and milk tea is NOT milk versus nondairy creamer used (like in America). Instead, fresh milk tea is not mixed together for you. Milk tea is fresh milk and tea shaken via the cocktail shaker to create that foamy milky texture.

Braised tea egg. Vince never had a legit tea egg before (besides the ones I’ve attempted to make at home), so I ordered one for him to try in its homeland. He liked it. It was a tasteful tea egg.

Tieguanyin pearl milk tea. The milk tea had a very creamy and milky texture and taste. I loved the at the tea still went through. The boba was the size between a mini boba and regular size boba. It was medium sized boba. It was soft and chewy (not as soft as last night’s), but not sweet either. It was good.. but I hate to say this: last night’s street stand boba was the best I’ve ever had!!!!!

We were going to go to another night market tonight but it’s already 930pm and our feet are exhausted from all day walking!!!! I was secretly a little disappointed but it’s okay.. we were already not able to hit all of them to begin with.. there’s too many and all of them are at least a 30min train ride away..

AT LEAST I GOT MY DTF AND ORIGINAL BOBA!! It’s still a win today! 🙂