Late start to this morning.. we used the gym on the 16th floor and had a beautiful view while working out though!!! You can see the Taipei 101 Tower. That kind of promoted us to just add it to our itinerary. I wanted to go see it but Vince had veto’ed it. But seeing it from our gym, he’s like.. yeahhh let’s just go.
Vince needed more coffee to poop and the hotel wasn’t delivering coffee pods fast enough, so we walked across the street to 9 Days Coffee so that Vince can get coffee. The Starbucks next door also did not have my mug.
I got the flowery latte, which was very mild and light but bitter. I didn’t like it so I gave it to Vince.
The first thing we went to was Starbucks Reserve at Taipei 101: NO more mugs. The girl said they are all sold out in all of Taipei. Wow, what bad luck do I have on this trip?! Only one for three mugs.
For lunch, we decided to eat at the food court at Taipei 101. It looked sick and big!!! It was definitely the most elaborate food court I’ve ever been to. All the foods came out in eleborste and high quality chinaware. There was such fancy varieties to even teppanyaki and shabu shabu and bbq in the food court itself!!
We decided to share a combo portion at Five Star Noodle House because the pictures looked bomb. Each combo order came with some appetizer sides that included Taiwanese golden kimchi, seaweed, and boiled green vegetables with carrots. The yellow kimchi is Taiwanese kimchi also called golden kimchi. It is made of cabbage and I think egg. I remember watching a YouTube video about this Taiwanese golden kimchi. It gets its yellow color from carrots and seasoned with sesame oil, sesame paste and fermented bean curd. It wasn’t as tart or pungent as Korean kimchi but tasted very neutral and simple. The seaweed was also more mild.
Dry noodles with trio of sauces + beef soup. My guess is that the sauces are sesame sauce, black bean sauce and minced meat. That’s what it looked like to me. This was so unbelievably good. It had the savory flavors from black bean sauce while having the creamy sesame flavors from the sesame. It was so good. Just so good!
Beef soup with beef brisket, spongy tofu, pork’s blood and fried doughnut. I loved this beef soup! It reminds me of Vietnamese bun bo hue and Taiwanese beef noodle soup. It was so flavorful yet light and comforting. The brisket was tender. The spongy tofu just absorbed all of the soup juices and gushes in your mouth. The pork blood was very soft yet bouncy. The fried rougher was very dense and crispy and crunchy; yet it retained all the flavors of the broth.
Vince also wanted porridge on this trip and was not satisfied from the mediocre one from the HK cafe so we also ordered a porridge from Wish Congee station.
Beef congee with salted egg yolk. This was the most interesting porridge so we picked it. It was very different. The porridge felt like rice in thick soupy water with salted egg bits immersed within.
For dessert, we got boba at Tao Tao Tea that was also at the food court.
Golden uva milk tea with boba. I picked this because I’ve never heard of golden uva before, which is a type of black tea. It was pretty good but nothing special in my opinion. The boba was chewy but not as good as the street boba from the first night.
Blossoming Jasmine milk tea with boba. The jasmine was very distinct and strong with a nice flavor.
In the way back, we used our free little goodie bag provided by the hotel to fill it up with free candy. It was also nice that the hotel lobby also provided free takeout cups of Americano coffee and Thai tea. There was another self poor stand that served fruit tea in nice cups.
To digest, we checked out T-UP Climbing. It was about a 15min walk from our hotel. You had to take off your shoes outside of the store before walking in (all the other gyms let you take off inside the gym). Here, shoes stay outside the front door. By far, this is my favorite gym to visit on this trip in terms of layout and vibes.
For dinner, we checked out Shilin Night Market in the Shilin District that was a 30min train ride from us. It was much bigger than the first night market and is usually an underground night market but is under construction. But there are a lot of stands open all around the main area. There was a lot of shopping stands and carnival games for kids.
We got another yuzhou pepper bun because we loved it the first time we tried it. The pork is just so juicy. Vince’s loves the abundant of green onions. We both liked how it is baked and has this thick crunchy shell. It didn’t feel heavy like the other fried foods.
Okay, this is my last time ordering a blood cake at the night markets. Their blood cakes are different from what I like. These are much more dense and seasoned with a bunch of things. The texture is more pastry and not smooth like I like.
Aye hey thin noodles with squid, oyster and beef. We saw a “sit-down” stand that served these noodles and I said these are a must try according to other bloggers. It was pretty good! It consisted of a very thick sauce with super thin flour noodles. The baby oysters are soft. The squid was plentiful. There could be more beef. We added chili oil and white pepper to give it a kick. Vince really likes this one.
We tried this lady’s popcorn chicken that she doused in a sweet and sour sauce while wokking it. It was pretty good. It reminded me of popcorn chicken.
I tried another bubble milk tea from Han Tea, one of the boba stands. Sigh, this was disappointing. The milk tea was very bland. It could have been that the ice melted after our train ride and diluted my tea. The boba was also not good.
Tomorrow is our last full day until we head back home. We’re not actually home sick yet and I am sad to leave the boba country. Seeing boba milk tea everywhere at such an affordable price makes me so happy. I dread the expensive prices when we go back home.
