Street food markets are an excellent way to try local cuisines while also getting to know the ingredients, traditions, methods, and people behind each item – something that Real Food Traveler encourages travelers to do whenever they can. Writer Edward Placidi takes us on a multi-sensory journey to several Taiwan Night Markets for items that tantalize – depending on your tastes and adventurous nature. 

Save this article about Taiwan Night Markets to Pinterest to keep it handy. Photos by Edward Placidi. Graphic by RealFoodTraveler.com.

Taiwan’s Exotic Night Markets: Exciting, and Daunting, Culinary Immersions

 Opening for business about 5:30pm, the vendors roar into action. They prep, mix, deep fry and grill as waves of the hungry arrive, who are soon shoulder-to-shoulder in thick crowds, and even queuing in long lines for the most popular dishes.

The Night Markets burst to life each evening in cities across Taiwan, offering an astonishing variety of exotic foods, and run at a frenetic pace typically past midnight. With more than 70 of them around the country, they are a Taiwanese culinary phenomenon that purportedly originated around the turn of the 20th century. And they can be daunting. Not because you are packed like sardines inching your way along the rows of food carts and stalls, but because of the many unusual if not unknown ingredients and dishes – that can be bewildering and sometimes off putting to the foreigner and non-initiated.

Think foods like duck tongue (described by one eater as tasting like a thick potato chip with shards of glass), chicken anus kebab (sounds bizarre but just meat from the hind quarters), and stinky tofu (fermented tofu that is, except possibly the durian fruit, the ultimate malodorous food that assaults you from 30 feet away).

Stinky Tofu Soup with Duck Blood Curd is the ultimate malodorous Night Market food.

Whether you are delighted or freaked by the offerings, the Night Markets are the penultimate sensory overload. From the cooking sizzles and pops, the nose-wriggling smells and cacophony of exuberant voices to the constellation of bright lights and sea of humanity, they are among the most exciting and culturally immersive experiences for visitors to Taiwan.

And, with so many choices, you can always find some tasty tidbits that are just right for your palate and sensibilities.

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At my first Night Market, called Ningxia, in the capital, Taipei, it was roaring at full throttle when I sat down at about 10pm for pork dumplings and hot and sour soup. The savory dumplings were served with soy and vey spicy chili sauces, the lip-smacking soup thick with wood ear and shitake mushrooms, tofu and bamboo shoots.

A vendor serves up hot and sour soup, paired with pork dumplings.

I had started out yellow-bellied (pun intended), choosing familiar Chinese foods. Next, I had to try the quintessential Taiwanese street food, oyster omelet. A long line of people was waiting so I queued up. A little like a pancake, a little like an omelet, the fresh oysters popped with juicy flavor in my mouth, blending with crunchy bean sprouts, onions and cilantro. Tapioca starch gave it a gummy, batter-like texture. The sauce on top was a surprising mixture of ketchup, sweet chili sauce, peanut butter, rice vinegar, sour plum powder, corn starch and salt. Fun, tasty and chewy with layers of flavor – seemed like a true taste of Taiwan ‒ it was my favorite dish at these nightly culinary festivals.

Oyster Omelets are a very popular street food at the Taiwan Night Market.

There was an even longer line for Scallion Pancakes, and I knew why when I bit into mine. The flaky delight cooked on a wok was crispy and a little greasy on the outside, with an egg broken on top and cooked into the crust. Inside it was soft, eggy and oniony. A very simple yet perfect comfort food, and maybe the tastiest snack of all.

Large quantities of vegetable oil are consumed at the markets, because most offerings are deep fried or cooked with oil on a wok. Portions, however, generally are not large. It’s more like small-plates dining: you wander through the rows of food vendors, stopping to sample a snack here and a dish there, until you are full.  All ages descend on the Night Markets but it’s predominantly a younger crowd that is energized and excited by the chaotic scene ‒ the assault of frenetic voices, myriad powerful smells and surge of expectant humanity snaking like a slow-moving conga line.

All the food vendors wear masks which is required for anyone serving food in Taiwan. Giving the Night Markets an added festival atmosphere are, in addition to food sellers, stalls selling clothes, toys and more as well as carnival and video games.

Crowds wending through the Ningxia Night Market.

Catering to the predilections of the local foodies, a number of curious animal-parts dishes can be sampled: blackened chicken feet; roasted duck head and neck; pork-intestine and chicken-skin kebabs; bowls of offal and blood pudding soup; and stinky tofu that includes duck-blood curd.

Peking-style Duck Head and Neck is a Night Market standard.

The fried sweet potato balls took me by surprise: I expected a heavy fried food but instead they were light, crispy and delicious (the purple ones with plum powder were even tastier). The balls literally popped and collapsed in my mouth when I bit into them. The standard order of 10 balls I thought would be too much was just right, washed down with a big cup of fresh mango juice.

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The grilled mountain pig sausage on a stick (not a wild boar but a domesticated animal raised in the mountains) was surprisingly sweet and smoky with a charred aftertaste as well as laced with many big chunks of fat.  The deep-fried bill fish was crispy outside but mealy inside because it was too-heavily breaded.

A woman grilles Mountain Pig Sausage at a Taipei Night Market.

There are just too many tidbits to try even with repeated visits to Night Markets. Among the many other items were boiled rice balls coated with black sesame seeds and ground peanuts; shrimp patties, a pancake with shrimp and egg topped with sesame seeds and cheese; Cantonese congee, a rice porridge with a choice of protein and condiments; quail eggs dipped in cheese and fried; and breaded and fried squid and octopus.

Drinks catered to many tastes: sugary Boba-style drinks; fruit and milk concoctions with mung beans, papaya, strawberries or winter melon; freshly squeezed juices including sugar cane and pineapple that was whipped frothy, as well as soft drinks. Desserts included fruit jellies sometimes served in condensed milk or coconut milk; milk ices topped with jam or fruit compote; and peanut ice cream roll: a small crepe topped with a handful of shredded peanut brittle and scoops of ice cream then rolled up like a wrap.

The Night Markets are an immediate deep-fried and wok-cooked immersion in the Taiwanese food scene. They require a spirit of adventure and patience with the crowds and difficulty finding a spot to sit at the too-few, tiny, crowded tables behind the food kiosks.

At my last Taiwan Night Market experience, in the city of Tainan, I knew it was going to be wild when I saw literally several hundred small motorcycles crammed inches apart in the parking lot. I had to sidle and squeeze my way in, inserting myself in the gush of action and outpouring of energy and anticipation.

I got caught up in the momentum and went all in:  Even with Google Translate I couldn’t get a translation for a pair of mystery balls covered with a whitish sauce; I ordered them anyway. I bit into what was a glutinous glob with crunchy animal cartilage inside. I gagged, spit it out and threw it away. I never found out what it was.

-Story and photos by Edward Placidi

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