Ultimate Taiwan Night Market Street Food Tour

Hi everyone! I'm out here in Taipei. Very excited to be here and eat just like a million street foods. You already know, the street food culture here is insane. You can literally see from here just how many people there are on the other side. Taiwanese people really love their street food. It is part of our culture at this point. So Taiwan is located in the heart of Asia. It's about a 17 hour flight from New York and as someone who spent a lot of time here growing up, Taiwan feels like home to me. I love it for so many reasons. The culture, the natural scenery, the hospitality. Like truly, Taiwanese locals are some of the friendliest I know. Of course, they're also known for their incredible food, a lot of which I've tried to make at home. And it's honestly through the food especially that I feel like you can understand how creative, diverse, and genuine Taiwan truly is. And what better place to showcase all of that than in their iconic night markets. I'm here almost every night when I visit. We are going! I also should say that normally I come here with my family after dinner. But today, today I came before eating dinner and I'm ready to eat. I feel like the hardest thing really is food. You can choose your battles. Lava juice. I love lava. Steak cubes. Plastic. Fried chicken. This is braised style food. Chang bao xiao chang. Barbecue juice. Oh my god. Squid noodle. You know you bake it with Taiwanese sausage. So I'm getting this mochi shaved ice that I really wanted the last time I passed by. I got both the peanut and black sesame flavor and they're going to serve it hot on top of a mountain of shaved ice. Oh, it's here! Look at this. It is a mountain of just black sesame and peanut filling. Perfect combination of like traditional meets modern. Because black traditional Taiwanese flavor. Now we have it over shaved ice. So you get like that hot and cold combination. Lava pieces are already in here. Go away! This mochi is so good. It spins out. Absolutely no waste. I am eating every single bite. I honestly love it when they come up with new spins on traditional foods like this. So then you get kind of like the best of both worlds. Traditional flavors but consumed in a different way. I'm so lucky to be here. I know it's dessert but great start. I used to have this all the time as a kid and I still love it. Like the taste of childhood. You have this for breakfast all the time. It's so creamy. Childhood papaya milk on the packaging. Also finished within 20 minutes. I don't think that should be a problem. There's also these shops off to the side of the night market. This one is a dumpling shop. So I think we should get some dumplings. I'm trying to write anything. I just asked her can I just get a plate of dumplings and here we are. Pan-fried dumplings. I have this too. In this shape too. It's just that I feel like everything I have here in Taiwan. You can taste the heart that's put into it. I feel like everybody just like really puts so much effort into the things they make. It doesn't matter whether it's like a stall, a family-owned business or like a big restaurant. It's the same kind of mindset behind everything. And finished. Guava! Guava to me feels like Taiwan's national food. Or maybe it's just the fruit that I associate the most with Taiwan. The fact that I can get fresh cut fruit at the night market is just so nice. They're simply getting it at a supermarket. Oh my god, I didn't know they ask you if you need to take out the seeds or not. Fresh guava. Perfectly cut. I got it with lemon and plum powder. Plum powder because that's how I've always eaten it. Maybe we just have some sort of fascination with plum powder. It tastes a little more like candy. It's sweet. And then I also got lemon juice because I like a bit of sourness. So fresh. Also here's Taiwanese fruits. If you eat local fruits like mangoes, guava, pomelo, everything here is sweeter. Like naturally sweeter. Extra little bit of complimentary flavor like a squeeze of lemon, sprinkle of plum powder and it's like the perfect snack. Especially if it's straight from the fridge. It's juicy. My food eating skills are little. I need to work on that. I am officially in food coma state. I cannot eat anymore. Also as I'm saying this, I see pig's blood cake over here and I need to get it. I feel like pig's blood cake is usually a little bit polarizing because it is pig's blood and glutinous rice but my mom loves it so I grew up sort of loving it. It is so hot in my hands right now. Covered in peanut powder. There's a spicy version to it. It's pretty spicy. But you can see that it's covered in cilantro so it's like sweet and savory. It's kind of like rice cake. Honestly, it's not that intimidating. You don't really taste like the metallic flavor of blood. You really just get like a peanut powder covered spicy chewy rice cake. My mom would think she was here with me right now. Definitely would try. Very traditional snack. Keep going. Night market. Somewhat never ends. There are also these mini arcade games at the night market. We were kids. We would literally go to the night market just so we could play these games. This is the OG boba version. This is my favorite jelly. Okay, thank you. I'll put it here. Don't go across. Oh, it's okay. Okay, thank you. I wanted to tell her to keep the change but she insisted that I take the five dollars. Got the version with ayu jelly which is a natural kind of jelly. I've made it at home before but I feel like having it in Taiwan just hits different. Usually you have it with lemon but this one I think it's just ice, bit of sugar, a little bit of boba. This is so soft. There's none of that instant boba here, you know. It's really like the slow cooked boba so it remains soft and tender. You need to have boba in Taiwan to know just how good the boba is. Get the traditional version. The classic. This is how they start. Sweet potatoes and they're deep fried until they become these real fluffy balls. A lot of different flavors. Taro and you can see how they've kind of expanded. It tastes fun on the outside. I feel like in Taiwan we love putting fun powder on deep fried foods especially savory foods. It compliments it very well. Moving on to my last item of tonight. I know exactly what I'm gonna get because I've been eyeing it from the very start. Also speed walking because I really hope there's not a line. Giant squid. Giant sign on top. All these flavors. Sometimes I forget that little spice here means still very spicy. I have my squid here. Smells incredible. I didn't cut it up so I could have this. But this always happens in night markets. I just keep buying and I keep eating. Like everything is so good. I'm done. I hope you enjoyed this quick little tour. Lots of good food here. So I hope the next time you come to Taiwan whether it's Taipei, Tainan or Taichung. Remember to check out the night markets. You never know what you're gonna find. All right I gotta go finish my squid.