Eating BRUNCH at Taiwan 7-ELEVEN

Hey guys, it's Mike Chen. I am in Taipei, Taiwan. I feel like I've been here a lot this past year. Anyway, I'm just passing through. I'm on my way to the Philippines for the first time ever. Really excited about that. But I do have like a 10-hour layover here in Taipei. So I figured I go get something to eat outside of the airport. And a lot of you guys have been messaging me asking me to kind of explore the 7-Elevens scene in Taiwan. Because unlike the US, here 7-Elevens are like the greatest thing. You can buy your train tickets, some of them you can do your laundry, and a lot of people here actually go to 7-Eleven for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Guess which one of those appeal to me the most. Anyway, I didn't want to go all the way into Taipei, so I found one of the biggest 7-Elevens in Taoyuan City right near the airport. So I'm going to go and let's go eat at a local 7-Eleven. Yeah, oh, that's it, okay, cool, thanks. Nice. I think that's it right there. Is it here? Yeah. Thank you so much. All right. There it is. If anybody ever told me that I would specifically leave an airport just to go eat at a 7-Eleven, I would never believe it. But here I am, and I'm actually really, really excited. Let's go. Taiwan's another country with a ton of motorbikes, and again, I think I'm just going to have to go. This, like I mentioned, is one of the biggest and supposedly one of the prettiest 7-Elevens in Taoyuan City. Gorgeous big windows, looks very bright inside. You get these like individual sort of booths. I can already smell something that's fried in there, and it smells good. This place, this is beautiful. Oh, really? So this is like slightly carbonated coffee. I never had, she said it should taste like dark beer. I never had dark beer before, but carbonated coffee, slightly carbonated. Interesting. Oh, thank you. It's so nice here. Um, alright, let me show you guys around. 7-Eleven, of course, is known for their snacks, and they have a ton of it. So this is like a bunch of Japanese snacks here, like stationery, and look at this. This is like so interesting, they got, they got Muji stuff here. You can play computer games here. Of course, a lot of Hello Kitty stuff. Did you know she's not a cat? Oh, I think I need this. This is, this is a soup base for hot pot. I might need to take this home. Check it out. Vacuum-packed rice. You know what's great about this is that, look at this, you can stack it like books. So your rice is nice and organized, and just looks neater. And this, this is one of my all-time favorite aisles, their instant noodle aisle. Check it out. Look at this, there are like dozens of types of instant noodles here. And this, this is my favorite one. We are definitely eating this today. I love the drink selection they have here. I mean, look at this. This is all like juice and different types of milk tea. Strawberry milk tea, green tea, lemon tea, like asparagus milk tea. I think I'm gonna stay away from this a little bit. Also, I don't know what it is, but drinking tea out of a paper box, it just makes it taste better. And Dr. Milker? Who's that? Like Dr. Pepper's Asian cousin? Besides that, salad, fruit salad. You can buy mushrooms here, eggs, fruit. You got all sorts of bento boxes. Taiwan sausage over fried rice. This is ribs over rice. Pork belly over rice. I mean, the selection is just overwhelming. And of course, there's the hot food items. We got tea eggs here, a must get. We got fish tofu here, being boiled. They don't have anything here yet because we're so early, but I really hope we can try one of these things out. Because this will go great on top of noodles. Then you got like a case just for, for hot drinks. You got hot chocolate lattes and hot milk teas. That's all here. A case for buns, bamboo pork bun, char siu bun, roast pork bun. Okay, all this looking at food, you know, you know it. It's making me really hungry. So I'm going to, I'm going to get a few things. I know it's just breakfast, but I think I'm going to need one of these. Fresh sweet potato. The bread, it says 現烤直送. So I asked them and apparently every day the bread is freshly baked and delivered here. They said this is a really popular item. This guy looks pretty good. And chocolate QQ balls. QQ in Taiwanese means really bouncy, really chewy. So these are going to be like, like mochi chocolate buns. I'll take a hot drink. Formosa milk tea. Ooh, it is really hot. In Taiwan, drink some milk tea. Pork bun, bamboo bun, cheese flour roll. You for sure need a tea egg from a 7-Eleven. The boiled food is still being boiled. We'll come back to that. We need some bento. I'm going for this. This is the chicken leg I saw earlier. That looked pretty good. And whenever I see beef noodle soup, I can't pass up. Ooh, soft boiled eggs. Sure. You know what? I'll try this. I'm thinking this is really healthy, right? And one last thing. I got to get my favorite ramen. And I'm going to go for the spicy version of the beef. So yeah, this will be breakfast. I don't think this is all going to fit into that little tray. Also, they have bubble tea here. You can order bubble tea at a Taiwan 7-Eleven. That's what I'm going to do. Look at this. This is my meal. I can't wait to get started. We haven't even got to dessert yet. All right. Breakfast is served. This is crazy. All right, first thing, I need to try this beef noodle soup. The employees here really recommended it. Also, it's cool because it's half lean meats and half beef tendon. That's like my favorite ratio. All right, let's go heat this up. What's really convenient about this is that they tell you exactly which button to push when you put this into the microwave. So here it says push zero. This goes in and then there you go. It's like zero. You push the button and you forget about it. That's it. Ooh, look at this. This smells incredible. Look at this broth. The noodles look very nice. Not at all soggy. Look at this giant piece of beef here. Oh, you can see the tendon running through it like a delicious roadmap. For like a pre-made noodle dish, this looks fantastic. I didn't expect this much broth. Look at this gorgeous beef soup. I can smell the soy sauce flavor. I'm telling you guys right now, but if you put this in a regular bowl and served it to me at a restaurant, I would never even guess that this was microwaved. The soup itself, it's got such a rich, beefy flavor. It's a bit oily, a bit spicy. It's just incredibly, incredibly beefy. And look at these noodles. They're not too wide. They're moderately thick and they don't feel like they're soggy at all. Couple of things. This broth itself, it's not really penetrating the noodles because the noodles are a bit thick. But like I mentioned before, I would never in a million years, after tasting these noodles, would ever think that I'd microwaved it. I mean, these taste like good quality noodles. They're chewy, they're elastic-y. And I think if you eat it with the soup, that is pretty darn good. All right, the ultimate test, the beef itself. I'm just really impressed by this. The beef is not ridiculously tender, but it tastes like a good cut of beef with nice tendon. And look at this big piece right here. Oh, that beef is tender. You guys seeing this right now? The thicker cut of beef, ridiculously tender, superbly beefy. Look at this piece of tendon here. I'm shocked that a 250-microwave bowl of noodle soup can taste this good. All right, know what this needs? This thing needs a tea egg. Look at that delicious pattern right there. Oh, look at that. All that flavor soaked into the yolk already. Tea eggs and beef noodle soups, they just belong together. They do. I like to put my yolk in the soup, kind of mix it a little bit. Scoop up some beef broth in that egg. Guys, you need to come here and try this beef noodle soup. You'll know what I'm talking about. Unbelievable. Oh, just thought of something. This broth is way too good to not have a bun dipped into it. I think this is the regular pork bun. The bun-to-filling ratio is not bad. Wow. Wow, this is awesome. Oh, this pork bun's delicious. You can tell by my surprise, I didn't think it was gonna be that good. But this is excellent. You guys see the chilies in here? This thing is spicy, it's meaty. I thought maybe the dough would be a little too much and this wouldn't be as flavorful. Oh man, I was wrong. This is fantastic. Taste it after it goes beef dipping. Wow. I could eat, no kidding, 10 more of these and be so happy with my life. The happiness to life, guys, is found inside a pork bun. I am so blown away by how good this is. Oh my goodness. Actually, I'm just like being blown away left and right. I was blown away by the beef noodle soup. I was blown away by this. Oh, good. Let's ask somebody else. Here, Jasmine, try this. How good is that? It's better than most of the places I've had in America. Isn't that just the most awesome thing? Man. Let's try the other bun. This is the bamboo bun. Mm. A little bit of crunch on the bamboo. I don't think it's as good as the other one because it lacks a little spice. But flavor-wise, this is on par. Again, dip it in the broth. Wow. You really get that nice bamboo flavor in this bun. Mm, so good. Oh, is this why Panda loves bamboo so much? Are we missing out? Next is one of their freshly baked breads. And this one kind of looks like what you find in a Chinese bakery. And you see some ham, scallions, sesame. It's good, but after like two incredible buns, this pales a bit in comparison. Mm, so good. It's a little sweet, a little scalliony, a little hammy. Nice and soft, but those buns were incredible. All right, next, let's change the pace a little bit. And let's go heat up our bento box. Nine. Ow, ow, ow. Can't wait. So this is marinated chicken leg with pork belly. That, ooh, that chicken leg, that's really marinated. Look at this. And this is the pork belly right here. Big old slice of pork. All right, I gotta try this marinated chicken leg. I just took a big old bite. Mm, mm, not dry at all. It is incredibly flavorful. It's a soy sauce-based marinade. The chicken itself is tender. It's not really juicy, but the flavor has penetrated all of this. And the pork belly, a little sweet, but really garlicky. I thought this was carrots and radish. It's not, it's actually carrots and bamboo. This is nice because the veggie's a little crunchy. I think all the items here individually are really flavorful. My problem with this dish is that there's not enough sauce to kind of help you eat the rice. Because look at this, you get a lot of rice, right? The veggie is not very saucy. So in Chinese terms, it's not very xia fan, or it doesn't pair well with a lot of rice. I think if they give this a lot more sauce, this would be a great bento box. I mean, it's a good bento box, but the sauce and meat to rice ratio is a bit off. Next up, my favorite instant noodles. You can't really find these instant noodles in the US because they actually have real big chunks of beef in here. But I really wish they sell this in the US because this is like one of the best instant noodles out there. For instant noodles, check this out. They have something that pulls out. And then on this, you can cook your instant noodles. This is what I love about these noodles. This is a pouch full of just gravy and chunks of beef. I mean, you can feel big chunks of beef just sitting in here. So you add the seasoning, the oil, and then this, this actually kind of freaked me out when I first did it, because look at it. It kind of looks a little off because the fat kind of solidified a little bit, but don't be afraid. This is delicious. Then go here. They have the water. And make sure you give this enough water because this broth is awesome. This is great. This is all sorts of corn, radish, different types of tofu, mushroom soaked in broth. And I'm gonna add this inside my instant noodles. This is yodofu, oil tofu, one of my favorites. Add a piece of radish, fish cake, mushroom, more fish cake, some fish balls. Ooh, here we go. I can smell the spice. Look at all the chilies that's in here. Every strand of noodles is just covered in the chili. Look at this. Big old chunks of beef. I mean, this one, you can obviously tell it's instant noodles, but I mean, when have you ever seen instant noodles with like this? And this is some of the extras I got. Let's jazz this noodle up. This is instant noodles accessorized. I'm just gonna add like the broth in here because that's good broth. First of all, that's good broth for instant noodles. I love oil tofu. It's got such a nice chewy texture on the outside and then just tender tofu on the inside. You take that, dip it in some broth. Little fish ball. Ooh, this fish ball is nice and bouncy. Big old fish cake. Ooh. There's something inside. There's like some rice noodles and I think maybe a little pork inside of this. Dip it in some broth. That is crazy. This is like a fish cake dumpling. That's insane. Oh, this thing tastes like a seafood cake with some caviar inside. It gives it a nice little crunch. You guys see those little white spots? Those are fish eggs. Radish is good. Big old mushroom. And then, favorite instant noodles in Taiwan. That is so good. Usually when you buy instant noodles from a store, you have to go back home or go back to the market. You can't top it with all this great stuff. Ooh, something I forgot. Soft boiled eggs. I am actually a little, little terrified of this. What is this juice? And I'm gonna, I'm gonna open this up and see how I look. Ooh, wow. Did not expect that. Now look at this. Tell me that ain't pretty. I'm telling you guys, that's a pretty good soft boiled egg. That's not bad. I mean, just to be able to jazz up your instant noodles like this, it's so awesome and convenient, you know? And this is a really good meal. And all this for less than five bucks. And trust me, you're gonna be full afterwards. Unless you're like me, because I still need dessert after this. These are supposed to be like cute doughnuts. That means they're chewy and bouncy. They look cool. What's great about 7-Elevens in Taiwan, check this out, is they have soft serve ice cream. And they have, periodically, they have different flavors. But I think the only flavor they have here for now, it's just fresh milk. And then I'm gonna add some strawberry glaze in mine. If this could fit on my wrist, I would just wear this around and eat it when I'm hungry. Oh, wow. Look at it. That's really elastic-y. Oh, they were right. This is very QQ. It tastes literally like a mochi doughnut. This'll be great with my soft serve ice cream. Take the doughnut, dip it in some ice cream. I've been to Taiwan many times, Jen. I've been here for the drinks, I've been here for the ice cream, but I never thought eating here would be so much fun and that the food would actually be pretty darn good. Oh, I forgot something. The asparagus, hang on a second. Hey, come here, Jasmine. It doesn't smell like asparagus. It just smells like sweet. Smells like soup. All right, I'm gonna try this. It tastes a little sweet, a little sour. It's kind of funky, right? It's not bad. It's like a milky asparagus, but it's sweet. And it's kind of veggie. What was your favorite thing here, by the way, that we had today? Well, I really love the tea eggs. Yeah. I love the beef noodle soup. Oh, the baozi. Yeah, I think my favorite is the first beef noodle soup and the bun. I think if I just come here, get the beef noodle soup and a couple buns and a tea egg, I'd be a happy man. Anyway, guys, if you're ever in Taiwan, check out the 7-Eleven for yourself. Let us know what you think about it. All right, thank you all so much for watching. We are on our way to the Philippines. So until we eat again real, real soon. See you later.