Taiwan Street Food Is INSANE! The Best Peking Duck & Taipei’s Craziest Night Market

We are going for some duck. Duck off. Are we really? How rude. Another duck going away. Okay, welcome back to Irony Board Meals. Wow, these look very popular. Wow, what is that? It's like legs. Oh, I'm just going to try. Oh, it's camera. I want this again. This is so cool. I just want to get everything. I'm worried it's going to pop on his head. Welcome back to another video. I am very excited for today's vlog because it has a focus around something that us on the channel, George and I, and the kids actually, so today is going to be a very food-heavy day, which, to be honest with you, every day when we're in new countries, travelling around, every video ends up being a food day because, in my eyes, travelling, of course you see the sights, but eating the food of the country you're in is like the best, the highlight for me when travelling. So already, we got here a couple of days ago now, and we've already been treated to a lot of delicious food. I had these amazing xiaolongbao dumplings yesterday. We queued for like 45 minutes to an hour in the street, and they were so worth the wait. They were incredible. We bought a few of these bags of fruit in 7-Eleven. It's great for the kids to go around. Some guava. I don't think I've ever tried guava on its own. Do you eat the skin bit? I guess, if they serve it like this. I've never had this. It's good. It's quite sour. Mmm, quite floral. Good word. That's quite nice. As we go around, we've stopped at many street food stalls. There seem to be loads of little carts that people pull up and move around different areas in the city. They get a little spot on a street and just sort of, I don't know, I guess they move around different areas of the city. They sell things like pancakes. We've had these little, I don't know what they were. They're kind of like swirly little shapes that kind of had like dough inside. They were really good. And we've tried several of those, and it's super, super cheap. Like $30 or less for something. And yeah, we've had some amazing food already, so really excited to have more of that today. We are having a traditional lunch in a restaurant today. That's your clue. And then for dinner, we're going to head to a night market. So it's literally like food all day. So hopefully you like food videos. And if you're watching this and you're feeling a bit peckish, maybe grab a snack to watch this video with, because I think we're going to make you quite hungry from showing all this amazing food. But anyway, first things first, we're actually heading towards an area that we've not been to yet. We're staying in the Ximending area, and we're heading to somewhere. It's like a 20 minute walk away, and it looks to have this amazing temple to go and see. So we're doing that first, just to work up a bit of an appetite after our breakfast at the hotel, before heading for some lunch. So yeah, join us on a nice morning stroll through the city. If you are new around here and you're not subscribed, please feel free to click the button. We've got loads of other videos in Taiwan coming up, and then we're moving on to some other countries in Asia. So it's a bit of an epic trip we're on with the kids. And if you're new around here and this is the first video you've seen, hello and welcome. I'm Lucy, George is walking behind, and we've got two boys, four-year-old and nearly one-year-old. Yeah, we've been loving travelling around as a family of four. So, enough rambling for an intro. It's naturally a little bit too long, but hopefully you're still here, and you'll enjoy today's vlog. It's amazing here. We were just saying it's so sunny today, and with the boys, it gets quite warm in the sun. Well, with anyone, but with the kids, we have to be a bit more careful. And these walkways are just every single place you look. So they've often got shops or businesses or restaurants on one side, and the road's the other side. And it's like, every single road we've been down since we've been in Taiwan has got this undercover area. It's genius. It's very handy. We're not sweating walking through in the heat to our destination. We're just able to walk in the shade. It's really nice. But it's actually been lovely this walk this morning. It's a Sunday here. It really feels like a nice Sunday morning stroll, because the area we're in, I absolutely love it. It's amazing, but it's absolute chaos. It's so noisy, neon light, people selling balloons, like, loud music coming from the shops. It's a real, like, vibrant, amazing area. But stepping away from that and coming to this quieter, more peaceful area, it's really nice. But I actually do prefer the area we're in, just for, like, the atmosphere. But this has been really nice to kind of see a different side of it. This looks cool. There's all, like, lanterns lining the streets. This is beautiful. So this is a very cool street that we found. It used to basically be a main passage between two areas. We were just reading the sign on the wall. Cool to look at. It's, like, very unique. It's all kind of these brick pillars, and they put these lanterns up, and then wood structures for the actual buildings. I've never seen anything like this in Asia. It's reminding me strangely more of the UK, with the brick. Like, there's old streets like this, like, when we visited Birmingham and places like that, the industrial kind of places, that, for some weird reason, kind of reminded me a little bit of that. Obviously, without the lanterns. I wasn't thinking Birmingham. No, is that a bit of a stretch? I wasn't thinking England. Is that a stretch? Yeah. See, on this channel, we just say what comes to our minds first. Nothing's planned or scripted, and that is, that's what my brain saw. So, for example, this building here, just saying it was a tea house, and people would gather here. So it's, like, very, very old. I always try and imagine when I travel, whether or not there's a sign saying this is a really old place, or it's just your average street. I just try and imagine the people who lived there before. I even do this at home. Think about, like, your own house. Think about your house, wherever you live right now, if it's old enough. Our house at home was built. Actually, I can't really do it. I can do it with my old family house, because that was, like, a Victorian period, but our house now actually isn't that old. But if you have an old house, just imagine, like, the families, the generations that walked the same corridor to you, slept in the same bedroom as you. All these people, these humans that you just don't know, but they may have had their whole life in that house, and that may have been their house and their family memories and stuff. I just, I was going to the toilet one evening, walking along my corridor. This is at my parents' house. I think it was built in the early 1900s, and I just was thinking to myself, wow, there would have been someone doing the same thing as me in the middle of the night, walking along these same floorboards. Creeped me out in a way, but made me feel quite cool as well. That's why I love if, on Facebook, sometimes those photos pop up of, like, your hometown in whenever, whatever year, and it's really old photos, you kind of recognise, you're like, oh, that's changed, but I recognise that building, so that is where that is. And just imagine here, just years and years ago, hundreds of thousands of years ago, just people living and just walking along these streets. People vlogging. That's going to be weird in the future, because 100 or 200 years from now, people are going to say, oh, 200 years ago, there was this vlogger, and you can still watch his vlogs, it's in 4K. That's going to be weird, because right now, where we are, 2026, we can't go back really in good quality past, like, the 50s or 60s. Yeah? Is this food video? Oh, I'm really rambling for a food video. The food's coming. If you clicked on this video for food, that's coming, but on this channel, you get everything, you get the whole day. But isn't that going to be strange? That's going to make history classes so much easier in the future. In 300 years from now, or 200 years from now, what was life like 200 years ago? Main road. Oh, we know exactly what it was like, because there's YouTube, there's vlogs, there's people filming their whole day. I hope this is being watched in the year 2210. Hello to you all in the future, I'm long gone, but I hope you're enjoying the vlog. This is what I seem to love about Taipei, is that we have walked so far today, we have not got a taxi or a car or anything, and we just popped out here, and this just looks so much more local and less touristy. It just seems so authentic. So we have come now to Mangka Longshan Temple, which was voted one of the top 100 religious scenes of Taiwan. And another great thing about travelling and wandering around, I literally just said, oh, this seems way more local, and then we turn the corner, and it seems very touristy here, because this is clearly one of the tourist spots, things to come and look at, but very nice. We've got a whole waterfall over this side as well. Look at that! Uber has dropped us off, and we are now in this beautiful area. It's a very hot day. I feel like I'm back in the Philippines. It hasn't been this hot since. So on this trip we... Hello! We started in Malaysia a long, long time ago. Feels like ages ago. Then we went to the Philippines, then Hong Kong, and now we're here in Taiwan. It's this really lovely, peaceful area. We've got a fish pond here, a little bridge over there. How nice this looks. All free to come and walk around, although most people are doing the sensible thing and sitting in the shady spots around it. But we're on our way to see one more thing, and then we are having some lunch. Lucy's found a place. We're going to have some delicious food. Chiang Kai-shek. This is called the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, and it's amazing. You're just sort of walking up a normal street, and you're laughing. You should film yourself, what you're doing right now. Behind the camera, I'm going like... No, what are you actually saying? It's like Not Today Potter. It's the only thing that makes him laugh. Like a Voldemort impression. Or is it Voldemort? I don't know. Let's carry on talking about this. I'll do it again. Not Today Potter! Yeah, amazing. It's so big and overwhelmingly huge, big white building in front of you. Beautiful blue tiles on the roof. You can go inside it, but it's midday heat now with the boys. Huge flight of stairs to get up, and we've got the stroller, the buggy. I think we're going to have to look from the outside this time, but it's amazing. I'm glad we came to see it. It's set in these lovely grounds of perfectly kept gardens with little fountains and streams. It's so off-putting. I'm getting Harry Potter impressions in my ear while trying to film, but it's making him happy, so we're all good. The next plan is finally in this food video. You'll be pleased to know we are heading for some lunch. The menu today is a Taiwanese favourite. Apparently it was not necessarily from here, but there have been a lot of variations and things added to it to make it a Taiwanese classic today. We are going for some roast or Peking or barbecued or crispy, however you want to call it. Duck. I cannot wait. Duck off. Are we really? How rude. Okay, we are in the restaurant. However, we have a slight issue. They have no tables for the whole day. We also think that this is the place we may have come to when we were last in Taiwan in 2018. We just kind of remember it. We came at night. I'm going to have to go back and watch our old vlog to see if it was this same place. We were up on the second floor of a building here and it just looks so familiar. I believe we sat in this corner. Oh look, we've got some duck being carved here. Another duck going away. And we remember it so well because we were very naive travellers back then from the UK, hadn't been in Asia, hadn't been out of Europe. And when you order duck pancakes in the UK, it all comes just shredded up. They deliver it to your table shredded already. So we were here and the duck comes out and it literally looks like a whole duck that's just been cooked, head and everything. We were like, oh, okay, cool. This is like authentic. Then they start carving it. It was like a theatre piece and I remember right at the very end of them carving it, they get the heads, they place it right in the middle, they get the biggest knife out they have and they do one big chop through the middle, right through the middle of the duck's head and the duck's beak. And we were like, oh. It's just weird. We had never seen anything like that before. We were like, okay, cool. And then you can eat that as well if you want to. Okay, I think we're ordering on Two Panda and we're getting it delivered to our hotel. I think it's a plan. Lady has been super helpful. This is the restaurant. It's so well rated. No wonder they're booked up. Shame on us for not making a reservation and just rocking up. But I think this is going to be the best option. And we can still enjoy the delicious food here. The lady here was so patient and helpful with me. They didn't deliver on Two Panda to our address, but a different branch does. And I've got it on priority and it's only taking like 40 minutes. We now need to get back to the hotel before the duck gets to the hotel and hopefully enjoy it. But she's been so helpful and patient and literally helped me translate and order everything and there will be extra bits I wanted to add to it. So, duck is ordered. We'll be able to enjoy it in the room. Not the restaurant experience we're hoping for, but... Might be more chilled. More chilled with the kids, to be honest. And we're still going to get the great food. So, I'm more than happy with that. Alright, very quickly, this part of the video is sponsored by Lingopie. They got in touch with us and asked if our audience would find something like this interesting. And I know a lot of you guys like to travel like we do. It's basically a language learning platform, but it's different. Instead of sitting there trying to study, you learn by watching TV shows and movies made for native speakers. And Lingopie basically feels like a more useful version of that. So, I set this up the other day. Had a bit of a play with it. And what I like the most is that you get subtitles in both languages. So, you can be watching along, listening to the native language, the language you're trying to learn. And at the same time, have both subtitles running. And if there's a word you don't understand, you can click it. It instantly translates and it'll save it to a review list for later as well. It doesn't feel forced. It just kind of starts sticking. There's also a cool feature where you can actually say the words back and compare your pronunciation to the native speaker. But yeah, at the end of the day, it's just such a fun way to learn a language. So, if you want to try it out, there is a link in the description of this video where you can try Lingopie for free. Put something on that you probably would watch anyway. See how you get on with it. So, we're back in the room now, waiting for our duck to arrive. And getting ready for what we're doing tomorrow, we're showing Coda this. Crazy. He's all mic'd up. So, you can hear every sound. Crazy, isn't it? I want to try him out. You want to try? I could not have watched his live. Like, I needed to know it went well before watching it. He's like making jokes. We haven't, we've obviously heard about this and seen some of it. We haven't watched the whole thing. Never watched the whole thing, yeah. Now, okay. All for Liffy. Now we know that he was fine. We can watch it and relax. Okay, welcome back to Ironing Board Meals. We seem to have taken over. This is our table in this room for some reason. Looks amazing. So, we've got the crispy duck here. It's travelled well. It's really well packaged. The pancakes have got individual wrappers here, so that's keeping them fresh. We've got the scallions or green onions and spring onions, we call them in England. Cucumber, additional cucumber because Coda loves it. It comes with a three cup leftover duck chicken, which looks amazing, and I also ordered some scallion pancakes. Little wrap things here as well. So good. Okay, here we go. I've made myself a pancake. Mmm. Wow. So delicious. Oh, I love it so much. The pancake texture's kind of slightly chewy. Then you've got the crispiness of the vegetables. The duck's not got the crispy skin. I think the outside probably was crispy before it travelled. The only downside of it not being in the restaurant is it's not really as crispy but the flavour is amazing. Mmm. So delicious. Loose. This place looks cool. Really cool. Look at that. Wow. So nice. And it's getting darker, so all the lights are coming on. It looks so nice. So the plan is to head for some street food and get this boys some food. Bless them. Bit hungry, aren't you, matey? We're all hungry. We need some food. We're here for a feast. We're going to find some delicious things. It is currently quarter to six. I'm not even going to try and pronounce it. It's R-A-O-H-E Street Night Market. It's really hard to pronounce. I don't know how you pronounce that and I don't want to get it wrong. R-A-O-H-E. R-A-O-H-E Street Night Market. It's quarter to six and they say it opens at five but then everyone's set up by about six. So hopefully we're sort of getting there. Things are all open. We'll see. Yeah. But it's busy already. I'm seeing loads of nice stuff already. But how do we choose what to get? Just get one of each, not everything, but only get one of each place. Yeah. Then we've got more space to eat more. Not of each place. You know what I mean? One of each. Right. Of course. Because we want to try everything. I say we walk down. Oh my goodness. It's busy already. I say we walk down the whole street. Yeah. See what we like the look of and then go back and buy. Alright. Let's do this. Wow. These look very popular. I wonder what these are. So it seems like a mixture of some clothing stores. Some other things. Not just food. Mainly food. There's a couple of stores along the way as well. This is so cool. I just want to get everything. So the reason we chose this market was because there's loads basically in this area. There's like so many that come up. But we thought we wanted the one that had the best food. This is a highly rated food one. A lot of the others have got more like shopping and stuff. There is some shopping around here as well. But this is definitely like the food focused one we sort of wanted. But honestly I don't actually know how we're going to pick what to get. Because I would have any of this stuff here. It all looks great. We've made the mistake of stopping and trying to go backwards. And it's kind of a bit of a one way system it seems. I'll just try to cross over and get over here. Here's my chance. Get over here just to have a look at this. This looks incredible. All this meat picking up. Wow. What is that? It's like legs. Look it's hands and legs pose. I'm not quite sure. Look just in there it's like feet of something. But I can't quite tell what. First little pick up. Wouldn't usually you've gone sweet first. But I think with this busyness and one way system if you see something you just need to grab it. So we've gone for one of these crispy donuts. Just stood out to us. And I'm going to try not to drop it with one hand. Maybe you want to try it first. We just went for the classic. They had chocolate, brown sugar. Nice? Yeah. Quite dry. Really? Maybe you need some sauce with it. Really flaky. I don't know. I mean it was classic. They did like chocolate and some other flavours. It's not dry. It's just not what we expect from a donut. It's like a pastry. It's like a croissant. Maybe you had the middle bit. No it tastes buttery. I just bit in the edge. Oh right. It's like buttery but it's not sweet. Not overly sweet. Really nice. So here we've got crispy intestines. Boneless chicken feet. Fish skin. Wow. So this is like some fried rice. I could do with some fried rice. Thank you. So the fried rice has arrived. Oh this looks so good. Just went and saw him making it. I'm just going to try. Obviously. That's what you do. It does look hot. So I'm not going to have the biggest mouthful. The smell is unbelievable. Wow. That is so good. Just tastes so fresh. So moorish. There's something about it that just keeps you wanting to eat more. There is so much flavour in here. The beef is soft. It's actually quite nice finding somewhere that has street food that you can have a little seat in. There's a little restaurant behind us. She was like Ethan will take away and I thought we could carry on walking but we could actually sit and enjoy the meal we've ordered instead of having to sort of walk through a street eating rice which probably doesn't sound very straight forward. I'm going to order another one. It's unreal. There's so much. The beef is really salty isn't it? There's so much flavour. It's unreal. I want this again. And it was $120 which is an amount of money that I don't know. Why are we not learning this currency? Is it like two pounds or something? I don't know. Picking up this. I'm not entirely sure what it is but we can choose five flavours. And it looks like these I don't know. Balls of fruit. Looks nice. It looks ridiculously sweet. I don't know if it's going to be. Is she pouring honey on top? I think maybe it's honey. I want to go with a strawberry one. Are they going to just like burp? I can't fork it. There you go. I'm worried it's going to pop on his head. It's good. It's like a sweet jelly. It's really nice. Thank you. And there's popping strawberry stuff inside as well. It's really good. We're going to pick up some of these mini pancakes. This looks so good. These look good. I got like a vanilla milk, red bean, custard, peanut butter, tiramisu and chocolate I think. That looks like red bean I think. Before you go any further can you pass me the tiramisu? I've got to find out which one it is first. I have to try all of them before. Tiramisu is my thing. It's got to be that one right? I am blocking the light. Sorry. It's got to be this one. Wow. Look at that vlog lighting. Amazing. Come to a street food market, make a video. Lighting provided. Don't worry about it. Tiramisu pancake. Never eaten this in my life. Never would have put those two things together. In in one? That is so good. Custard is my favourite. Can I have the other half of the custard? Is that the red bean? Can I have all of that? I've given Coda all the peanut butter. I just need to give loads to Coda as well. Can I have all the chocolate one? I like the red bean. It's less sweet. Could eat ten of those. What's this one? Custard. Thank you so much. Thank you. Just bought some little cups here for soy sauce. So cute. It's a little fish inside. I've got two of those. They're probably going to smash in our luggage on the way home. Optimism. Next on the agenda. Freeze dried strawberries. They go crunchy. Just let us try some. They go crunchy. They were so good. Oh my god. It's so crunchy. It's satisfying isn't it? They go really sweet and sour. Something about it. They go super sweet. And they're like a crunchy snack. Coda loves these. Have you ever had a crunchy strawberry before? It's crazy isn't it? How cool is that? Yeah. Thank you. Just queued about 5-10 minutes for this chicken. And I'm finally at the front of the line. Which tells me it's a popular place. It looks so good. They basically fry it first. And then they put it on the grill. And kind of barbecue it. I've never seen. I don't usually see. People doing both. They either fry chicken or they grill it. Hello. Just one please. How much? Spicy? Not spicy. Thank you. That was quick. Thank you so much. We got it. Got the goods. It's going to be a hot one isn't it? It's going to be boiling hot I think. I think honestly. We've got to carry this chicken around for an hour. And then try it in a minute. These waffley things are so good here. We had one the other day from another place. So we've just ordered one. It's mainly for Coda. The other day it was like £150 or something. £65 here. So actually the prices are maybe better here. So we're getting a peanut flavoured one. Very very nice. So just next to me the chicken feet. But I'm not eating chicken feet. I'm eating the chicken that I bought earlier. And it's now cooled down already. I'm trying it. Let's see. They've actually cut it up already into easy to eat pieces. All the stalls make it easy to walk and eat. Everything is hand held. All the flavour on there. The only options were spicy or not spicy. I got not spicy in case Coda or Remy wanted some. I think we'll be alright with Remy. I need help. That is so good. It's weird. It weirdly doesn't taste too fried. Maybe because they BBQ grill it afterwards. They fry it first and then put it on the grill. But it's got this kind of sweet glaze. But not too sweet. It's not sickly sweet. It's just slightly sweet. I'm just going to go all in. It's really good. This is amazing. Remember when I said I love tiramisu? Just found a whole place doing Taiwanese tiramisu. I don't know if tiramisu is actually Taiwanese or not. But it looked too good to pass on. So we've gone for it. I think thank you here is xixi. I'm so afraid of getting the pronunciation wrong. And them not knowing what I mean. I'm a little bit nervous to actually use it. Let's try. I tried. Let's see. I probably said something completely different. Let's see. Just got back to the room. The chicken has finally cooled down. I'm just enjoying it here. It's amazing. It tastes so good. I wish we got more of this. My tummy is feeling pretty full. We're going to finish this chicken. George ordered a random tiramisu at the end of the market. And we also got a peanut waffle thing. Which is really good. But how fun. Loved that. Really enjoyed the market. Everyone was really friendly. Prices were great. The most we paid for anything was a freeze dried strawberry. They were 200. Everything else was between 50 and 120ish. So I highly recommend the... The name is on the screen here hopefully. To avoid me pronouncing it wrong. And if you are a local or you know how to pronounce that. Please drop me a comment and let me know. Because I've got no clue. Thank you so much for watching today's video. Hope you enjoyed it. If you're still here at the end. Please comment end of vlog club. We'll go through all of the end of vlog club comments. Because you guys are the best. And we really appreciate you watching the whole video today. Subscribe if you're new. We've got a little bit more time here in Taipei. We're doing something really fun tomorrow. Actually you know what we're doing tomorrow. Because I showed you the Netflix thing we were watching earlier. Anyway loving being here. Excited for a bit more exploring tomorrow. So thank you for watching today's video. Hope you enjoyed it and we'll see you very soon in the next one. Goodnight.