Fresh Mex night in Hsinchu

After LuGang, we took a train over to Hsinchu to visit my cousin. Then promptly joined her and her friends to a local bar and drank ourself silly. Then promptly crashed out back at her place. This morning...correction, late morning, we headed over to a famous mala beef noodle soup place (麻辣牛肉麵). It's called Sichuan Duan Chun Zhen Chongqing famous snack (四川段純真牛肉麵). There was a long wait so I was very eager to see how good this place was. Seems everyone in the crowd was in the same agreement. After 30 or more minutes, we headed in and was escorted to a small square traditional wood table with bench seats. The interior had a very simple dark wood and white walls theme. It was also very clean and tidy. My cousin told me to order the regular noodles, not the mala one, because they were all spicy to begin with. She was right. The regular one was just perfect on the spiciness. The hand made noodles were Q (Taiwanese term for perfect chewiness) and the meat tender with a good marbling of fat. And their sour vegetables 酸菜 is really good. It's not the normal dark green limpy cabbage you find at just about every beef noodle place. It was lighter in color and tasted a lot fresher. Different and a positive check in the quality department for me. I really liked it! Overall, I'd put the dish up at a high 8.5/10. If your ever in the area, you must try this place out. Apparently it's a chain so there are other locations. Later that evening, we had ourselves a mexican dinner. I cooked some quesadillas and my cousin made tacos. It turned out to be a very simple and relaxing weekend. Also I discovered there was a rather large and extensive indoor bouldering gym called iClimb in Hsinchu too. So i'll have to plan another visit to we can all go together and climb some fiberglass rocks.

Sichuan Duan Chun Zhen Chongqing famous snack (四川段純真牛肉麵)
新竹市建功一路135號
03－5748838

新竹市武陵路62號
03－5408165

LuGang Lantern Festival

My girlfriend informed me of a lantern festival that was happening in LuGang. It's apparently this year's chosen city for the lantern festival and it has an old town, which I always find interesting. Our plan was to head out for one day and then head over to Hsinchu to visit my cousin which I haven't seen in a while. First off, we took the train and only had a small 7-11 breakfast. It took a good three hours. So when we arrived, I was starving. On the way to the festival, they had setup a rather large food market with temporary tents. This could have been LuGang's night market, but I can't tell the difference. Even some permanent night markets are still under tents. There were some unique foods there and some common staple foods. But I did see a guabao 掛包 (chinese hamburger?) vender and that's what I ended up desiring. Usually they use fatty pork but this vender used lamb. I love lamb, so i couldn't pass up this opportunity. It tastes awesome. Although I still think gaobao is better paired with fatty pork because the lamb makes it too lean. But it is definitely a unique take. Moving on, we headed over to where every else was going...the old street. Upon arrival, there were thousands of people, street venders, lanterns and street performances everywhere. It took forever to walk down the street or even take an unobstructed picture. Several of the buildings were over 100 years old. I always enjoy looking at old asian buildings. The wood braced roofs and the intricate stone carvings on the building corners make them so attractive. Looking further, you can see some of the japanese, chinese, western and taiwanese influences in the architecture. Sometimes renovated over the years and you can see a mix of cultures. We stopped by an old cafe that served Taiwanese and Japanese cuisine. It was decorated with advertisements and trinkets from the 20's to the 60's. It seems to be a popular theme here in Taiwan and I like it. It's like visiting a diner car back in the states, you know, like the one's converted from old pullman trains. For dessert we also tried miancha 麵茶, which is an old porridge dish that used to be popular 30 years ago, but has slowly phased out of popularity. LuGang still carries on this dish for traditional purposed. According to my Aunt, the government at that time would give out rice and noodles for free and milk was expensive. So someone invented a way to grind these free ingredients into a porridge that was supposed to taste like milk. It doesn't. But it still tastes pretty good! I regret not buying a $100 NT bag of this to bring home. It's a nice place to revisit, during lantern festival or not. It's still a tourist attraction, so the businesses will still be open during the regular season.

Bone soup beef noodle

It's been a busy past month with so many visitors from out of town, and it still doesn't let up. This weekend I have another friend from California coming to vacation here in Taipei. This noon-ish brunch, she knew of a recommended beef noodle soup place. Unfortunately, I forgot where it was and I forgot to grab a business card. However it's famous for having, what I think is, cow bones strewn across the front of the store as you can see from the photos. The noodles were machine processed. The soup was very good. The meat was excellent, but not to boast too much about. So I guess my overall impression wasn't spectacular. If I ran into this place again, i wouldn't hesitate to try it again, but I wouldn't be seeking it out in the future. Unfortunately in a city saturated with beef noodle soup places, it's tough competition to try and stand out amongst the sea of choices. I do my best, but I'm probably not the best judge of it either. 'Till we meet again.

Discovering new beef noodle soup locations

With my friends from the states in town, they wanted some recommendations to good beef noodle soup locations. I told them you can find a decent beef noodle soup stand just about anywhere. The quality doesn't vary by much. I feel ashamed that I don't know where the famous ones are. But it's not like I have totally ignored eating it during my stay here. At first I recommended the knife cut beef noodle soup place at Shida night market that I frequent. They either didn't hear me or weren't very receptive to that. So in the end, with some public wifi help, I still ended up doing my own search on google to see if there were any famous or outstanding restaurants. Eventually, I found a beef shop near the Zhongshan MRT station called 金春發牛肉 (JinChunFaNiuRou). It's actually about a 10 minute walk away from the station. But it's famous for it's beef, as it's primarily a beef butchery shop. This location didn't have Hongshao (紅燒) flavor, but instead it had the milder clear broth version. The soup and the noodles were sub-par in my opinion. My friend's liked it and praised the super tender beef as did I. But I think in order to really experience the Taiwanese beef noodle soup, you need excellent beef, 紅燒 soup and knife cut noodles. Obviously not on the same day, but for a second try at this, we found a famous shop in the YongKang street area. It's called Lao Zhang (老張牛肉麵店). The broth was much better here and they have three different flavors; Spicy, stewed and tomato. The noodles were still pre-packaged machine processed looking, but still good none the less. The beef isn't as good and tender as 金春發牛肉. So in conclusion, I'd still recommend the Shida night market location. It has two floors, free drinks, convenient location, good beef, awesome broth and knife-cut noodles.

P.S. There is also another famous beef noodle shop in YongKang street simple called Beef Noodle Master. Find the address below.

金春發牛肉 (Jin Chun Fa Beef)
No. 20號, Tiānshuǐ Road, Datong District
Taipei City, Taiwan 103

老張牛肉麵店 (Lao Zhang Beef Noodles)
台北市中正區愛國東路105號
http://www.lao-zhang.com.tw‎

永康牛肉麵 (YongKang Beef Noodles)
No. 17號, Lane 31, Section 2, Jīnshān South Road, Daan District
Taipei City, Taiwan 106
http://www.beefnoodle-master.com