Taiwanese Dishes You Must Try

Hey guys, it's Mike and Jessie. We're at Flushing and today we are going to have some awesome spectacular Taiwanese food. I am Taiwanese. You're Taiwanese? I am. That's awesome. I'm half-Taiwanese. You are? Sort of. Sort of. Well like my grandma's family. Let me tell you guys a story. My grandparents family were landlords So they're from Shandong province and when the communists took over China all my family went to Taiwan except for my grandmother So a lot of my family's actually in Taiwan right now But I've never been to Taiwan. Oh, you gotta go. It has everything I want. The best food. The best food, exactly. But the only thing I'm kind of scared about in Taiwan is how humid it is and how hot it is. Oh yeah, and the mosquitoes. Jessie and I are gonna try some awesome Taiwanese dishes here in Flushing because you know next best thing outside of Taiwan is New York City, I guess. So we ordered a bunch of dishes and we're gonna show you guys what we got. Our first dish has arrived and we had to get all the Taiwanese classic, well at least as much as we can try to get at this place. This is apparently a Taiwanese classic Sticky tofu. I really wanted it. He's like no no no, let's not order this. I did a video about eating this once and it was like absolutely like I did because I'm trying to talk without breathing And I ate this with the dorian and I couldn't take either. Can you define what smells good? I'm gonna be brave and try one of these. I'm gonna dip it. I'm gonna soak it in sauce. The flavor is a little sour, spicy and garlicky. Yeah, why is it supposed to be sour? All right, the whole time I'm trying not to breathe. So here's the stinky tofu, my second time eating stinky tofu. Just don't think about the smell. It's not that bad, right? This one is actually not as stinky as ones that I've had in Taiwan. Well, thank God. Let me ask you though. Okay, the taste to me, it just tastes like fried tofu. It does taste like fried tofu, but that stink adds that extra flavor. Of what? Pooh? No! So I think it's like the sourness of the sauce mixed with the stinkiness. It just creates a very distinct flavor that you don't know. But my question is why can't I just eat this tofu like as a tofu without the stinkiness? I'm telling you because the stinkiness adds flavor. All right, I'm just I'm trying to make sense of this because normally when you buy like a like a gum, right? There's no gum that's called stinky or stinky tofu flavored gum. Yeah, but salty has no like smell to it, but you don't want your mouth to stink like poo. It doesn't smell like poo though. It's like a light stinky smell. Granted this was much less putrid than like the one I got before. But still it's and I get that the fried version is much less dense in smell and aroma than the actual whatever thing it is that's soaked into that poo water. Also, it's an acquired taste. If you have it a couple times, you'll probably like it more. Okay, I'm gonna give it a few more tries. I tried it twice. I'm gonna I'm gonna put this by you. All right, I'll eat it. Tell us about this. This is a really famous Taiwanese dish. So this is o a jian, which is oysters with like an egg pancake. So this is a very popular dish in Taiwan. They sell it at night markets a lot. You know where I first saw this? Where? There was a really cool Taiwanese drama. I forgot what it's called. And it was like it was like some rich girl and then she meets this chef who was really poor. But she was trying to impress her like rich boyfriend. I forgot what it's called. You guys might know what that's called. But and he cooks a really good dish that is this. And so this is the, what is it? Clams? I mean oysters. And Taiwanese love oysters. Why is that? So this is oysters with eggs. Yep. Basically this is like a pancake. Oyster omelette sort of. Oh, yeah, it's more like an omelette. The sauce is kind of brown here. Usually it's more red. Also, I see a lettuce. That's kind of weird. I never see any lettuce in mine. What do Taiwanese call that thing? Oh-wa. Oh-wa? Oh-wa. Oh, yeah. It sounds like wah-wah, which is like kid. That's disturbing. You like that? What do you think? It's not bad. It's not as authentic. What's missing from it? I think it's the sauce and the texture. It's just a little bit mushy. Yeah, it's a little liquidy. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be crispy. Yeah, it's supposed to be like a little bit crispier. Since they pan-fry it. But I want to say it does have a nice flavor to it. Right. Like the sauce is like sweet and sour. Yeah, I like the sauce. And the vegetables, I mean, although maybe it's not very traditional, but it has a nice little crispy texture to it. Yo, this thing just looks gooey. Yeah, I think it's just like a little bit too gooey. It was a little less liquidy. It's like a really gooey thing. I think that texture might scare some people. I'll eat it anyway. But it's supposed to be slimy, but this one's just like really liquidy. It's like eating Slimer from Ghostbusters. Look at this guys. This is tea braised ribs. Braised in tea sauce. And I love ribs. And ribs braised in anything is awesome. But tea, that gives it even extra awesomeness. I love ribs. Look at that. Tea braised ribs. It's really hot. I can smell like black tea. It seems like a little bit of a black tea flavor. Kind of like tea eggs a little bit. I've actually never had this before. So this is not, you didn't know this existed. Actually I might have. It smells like I've had it before. I just don't know the flavor. We were informed that this was a very traditional Taiwanese dish. By the staff here at this restaurant. And then she said something about ribs. So I believed her. So I'm big. You can sell me ribs in any sort of capacity. Let's try it. This is good. I've had this before. I just didn't know it was called tea braised ribs. Oh this is really really good. I've had this before. It's fatty. The meat is really tender. The flavor is like in every single bite. I like the fattiness to it. You gotta have some fattiness when it comes to ribs. Usually I don't like really fatty stuff. But this is not that fatty. It's fatty but it's mixed with some meat. Lean meat. I like the gravy on this too. I bet you this thing, this gravy on the bottom is going to go really good with your rice. I could eat a whole bowl of rice with that. What's this? Woah. I found something crazy. This is like a big piece of meat and fat. That is too much fat for me. You can eat it. I'm going to try this. See how fatty that is? It has a lean piece of meat on there. You know when I was a kid, I wouldn't eat fatty meat. My parents and grandparents would try to make me eat fatty meat. Because it looks gross. I'm like, I don't want to eat that. They were like, eat it. I'm like, no, I don't want to eat it. When I was younger, I would not eat pork belly. Which is one of my favorite things to eat now. So yeah, I'm probably going to eat this. I'm going to eat another piece. This is really good. The fat, what it does, is it melts in your mouth completely. It has so much flavor. It's like a little bit sweet. A little sweet. It's definitely, you can feel like it has some of the aroma of the tea in there. Definitely. It's soy sauce based. You can taste a lot of the soy sauce. But it also, it's not too heavy. So the flavor is actually, you know, it's almost like a light, airy flavor mixed in with a heavy sauce. And there's a good amount of oil in this from the fat. Which is really tasty. Yeah. We ordered intestines. One of my favorite foods ever. Really? Why is that? It's just so fatty. Oh, another thing about intestines is that it's kind of stinky. You know what I mean? They are. But they cook it so much with the sauce. But when you eat it, you still get that stinkiness. Do you really? I actually like it. I actually like that whatever stinkiness attached to it. It actually makes it even tastier. Not the same thing as the stinky tofu. I have it in soup a lot, which I really like. And this is large intestines, right? Yep. Do you guys eat small intestines too? No, I don't think I've ever had it. Now, I don't know how much spicy tolerance you have. I don't really eat spicy. But I'll try it. But you guys know I'm a spicy monster. Get my tea ready. Oh, it's good. Will I be okay? I don't know if you'll be okay though. That's really good. I like that. Can you take it? It's not that spicy. You're right. When eating the intestine, after you bite it a couple times, there's a stinky flavor that floats into your mouth. It's okay though. It's not for it. It's good. And this thing is almost like I almost taste cumin in here. I do taste cumin in here. I taste cumin. I just think it tastes like flavor. Alright, so we have one more dish to try. We actually ordered two more, but they were out of the famous Mee Xian. It's like these thin noodles with intestine inside. This is a dish that most Taiwanese would be familiar with. San Bei Ji. My mom makes this all the time. It's actually translated to three cup chicken. Which means they put one cup of soy sauce, one cup of sesame oil, and one cup of vinegar. Like a whole cup. Wow. It's dark and the sauce definitely gave it a lot of more color. So what's it supposed to taste like? Soy sauce I guess? What do you think? It tastes good. I mean it doesn't taste anything special. I guess, but it tastes good. I probably haven't had that many of this dish before. Because it wasn't that memorable for me when I used to order it. This dish actually didn't come from Taiwan, but it got popularized in Taiwan. Sometimes I don't like eating chicken like this because the bones, they fall and get into the miscellaneous parts of the meat and you bite it and it's like a little bump. The quality of this chicken is actually not very good. It's a lot of bone. Got to the bone. One thing I always wanted to do in Taiwan is the night market. One of the best things. What do you fantasize about that place? So the night market in Taiwan, there's a bunch of them but there's one really big popular one. It's in Shilin. Basically it's just like one giant street and no cars driving there and on both sides there are little food places, little places to shop. Everything in the night market is really cheap and they have a lot of probably like a dollar for like a dish. It's crazy. You can buy a lot of knick knacks there. So when I'm paying for this dinner here, I could be like 30 dishes in Taiwan. I need to go to Taiwan. Probably like a dollar, two dollars, three dollars. You don't really get anything for more than five dollars. And it's authentic. It's good. It's really hot though. Because the climate is hot. And around you there's so many people cooking. Oh my goodness, I want to go so bad. It's like one of my dream places to go. They sell shoes there. Grilled shoes? Stir fry shoes? Shoes that you wear. Last time I had a snake soup when I was there. It didn't really taste like much. It was very bony. But I tried that. It was very interesting. I had some brain soup too. What was with you and random soup? I don't know, I wanted to try. It's like things that you don't really get here in the U.S. What do you think about this little place that we went to? I like it. I think it's kind of authentic. It could be better, but there's not much better that you can find in New York. This is actually the first Taiwanese restaurant I've actually been to in New York. You've never ate Taiwanese food? I have in the food courts where I order a miscellaneous Taiwanese dish. Like beef noodle soup or something. I never actually showed up and ate a Taiwanese meal of sorts. Oh, also beef noodle soup is really popular in Taiwan, but they don't have it here. Which is kind of weird. Those are some of the dishes that you might want to try if you ever go to a Taiwanese place. We recommend beef noodle soup, the noodles, the thin noodles. You have to try that. Sanbeiji. I don't think it's great, but sometimes you have to try it. It's good though. And the T-Ribs, fantastic. Intestine. Anything with intestine. And she's big on stinky tofu. I'm not. I have to apologize for the tables next to us about the smell. They're going to be looking at us like, you guys don't shower? I appreciate you very much for joining me for this awesome meal. Showing me around the Taiwanese cuisine arena. Alright guys. Thanks for watching!