Taiwan (II) - Food

I concluded that Taiwanese food didn't appeal to my tastebuds as much as sg/hk cuisine, even though there were maybe a hundred and one xiao1 chis1 to choose from ;P. I attribute it to the oiliness and perhaps queerness of things they eat! As such, I wasn't all THAT adventurous with trying the food at the night market. When dining out with the parents one day at a family restaurant kinda chain, E's mum was also half-horrified that I didn't seem to fancy most of the things on the menu. Felt rather paiseh, but I really couldn't force myself to happily ingest pig innards/trotters and all... And Taiwanese seem to like bamboo shoots quite a bit, which I unfortunately find stinky leh. However, I loved the selection of drinks in Taiwan... yummy green tea, strawberry milk teas/milk coffee/fruit milks were readily available in the convenience stores. I bought a new drink everyday, but didn't manage to try all...

The wide selection of yummy drinks at 7-eleven...

Something called 'Guan1 Cai2 Ban3' I tried at Shilin Night Market... Guess it's named this cos it visually resembles a coffin, but the chinese characters used were certainly auspicious- 'Official' for guan1 and 'Wealth/Money' for cai2... The bread was very well done, very crispy and I chose the shrimp filling for my coffin bread :P.
Uhm... a weirdly dressed vendor I spotted at Jiufen, selling taiwan sausages. I suppose with the keen competition from other food vendors, you have to do something to 'stand out' eh. But think for her case backfire, cos ppl just gawk at her then walk away....

Found out that the Taiwanese also have this bento culture, but the contents of their bian4 dang1s were quite different from the Japanese bentos I'm used to. This was a 'railroad bento' we got near the Hualien train station before boarding...

Had this on my last day in Danshui at this supposedly American ice cream cafe named 'Bigtom'... Red wine ice cream teppanyaki! Sticky vanilla ice cream on choc sponge cake drenched in red wine (the waitress pours wine onto the hot teppanyaki plate when this dessert is served, creating a mini sizzling effect)... quite cool and very satisfying :)