Taiwanese hospitality (photo by Jimmy Lin)
 

At the end of 2019, Shin Yeh Dining, a restaurant on the 85th floor of the Taipei 101 building, worked with food expert Hsu Zong to develop a set meal on the theme of “Around the Island.” You can take a journey around Taiwan without leaving your table by eating Taiwanese cuisine in the world’s highest Taiwanese-style restaurant.

Touring Taiwan through taste

Served at a Chinese-style round table, the first offering is “Yilan chilled baby abalone with bamboo.” The dish combines abalone, a staple at outdoor banquets, with what looks like sashimi. But when you pop the “fish” into your mouth, you’re in for a huge surprise: It turns out that watermelon gelatin has been substituted for sliced tuna, and the “wasabi” is in fact mashed edamame. You know at first bite that you’re eating something really creative.

When speaking about Taiwanese food, Hsu Zong uses terms like “fun,” “interesting,” “fusion” and “in­novat­ive.” On this little island where so many ethnic groups are mixed together, their different cuisines have also come together, giving rise to the unparalleled excite­ment of Taiwanese cuisine.

There is a reason why this culinary tour of Taiwan kicks off with Yilan, in the east of the island. “I wanted to start with the Kuroshio Current,” says Hsu, “because Taiwan would not have such a rich and dynamic seafood culture if not for the Kuroshio running along our east coast.” Next up is Taipei, where wholesale markets bring together produce from all over. Fresh ingredients from north and south are combined to make “Taipei double-boiled chicken and scallop soup,” which in­teg­rates the flavors of many different cooking styles. Then comes Yunlin in Central Taiwan, where the sunshine favors the production of fermented foods. In this dish, soy sauce and fermented soybeans are used to add flavor to steamed fish, showcasing Taiwan’s unrivalled skill in the use of sauces. After rounding southern Taiwan with a shrimp dish from Penghu, the meal ends with “Taitung thick rice noodles, stir-fried with chives and topped with bonito flakes.” This “Taitung limited edition” dish applies Taiwanese-style stir-fry skills to rice noodles, and is garnished with a sprinkle of bonito flakes.

In fact, back in 2018 Shin Yeh Dining came out with a set meal named “Taipei Taipei,” which was very well received. Similarly designed in collaboration with Hsu Zong, it starts from the concept of the outdoor banquet, and incorporates dishes requiring advanced knife work and cooking skills to embody the story of Taipei. The Taipei Basin used to be swampland, and one of the dishes​—“pan-fried scallops on rice cracker with whitebait and leafy vegetable soup”—uses a stew to repres­ent the idea of a swamp, so that diners not only get to appreci­ate the fine taste but also learn something about local history and culture.

Hybrid cuisine: The legacy of history

Changing scenes, we switch over to learning about Taiwan’s dietary history through different time periods. No. 1 Food Theater, an old building located in ­Taipei’s Songshan District, was built near the end of World War II. It was originally intended for use as a military granary, but the war ended soon after construction was completed, and the space was left deserted.

Granaries are spaces used to store grain crops, and when the old site was renovated it was hoped that its new use would not depart too much from its historical antecedents. Hsu Zong, who is a consultant for Lead Jade Life & Culture, developed the connection with “food,” making the first floor into a supermarket selling farm produce that Hsu selects himself from across Taiwan, while the second floor is a space where people can enjoy fine cuisine.

You can see the thought that Hsu put into this space just by perusing the menu. It introduces Taiwan’s culin­ary history through various time periods, from the era of Japanese colonial rule (1895‡1945) and then the early post-WWII period (after 1945), to the influx of Western culture (1951‡1965) and later of immigrant cuisine (brought by Southeast-Asian immigrants arriving since 1990). To represent the era of Japanese rule, Hsu recommends “beef cheek bourguignon in Japanese curry,” as the Taiwanese only began eating beef in that era. For the early postwar period, when the ROC govern­ment moved to Taiwan along with large numbers of Nationalist soldiers and mainland Chinese refugees at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, Hsu of course suggests the “braised beef platter” and beef noodle soup (“bone-in short rib with noodles”) that are both associated with military dependents’ communities. For the time of the influx of Western culture, Hsu’s favorite is French-style “duck confit,” which is a tip of the cap to the “canard à la française au ris” (French-style duck with rice) served at the Bolero, Taiwan’s oldest Western-style restaurant. And with the trend of cross-border migration brought about by globalization, recent immigrants have introduced Southeast-Asian elements into recipes in Taiwan.

Stories of the land, where food is produced before it gets to the dining table, are even more entrancing. Taiwan is endowed with a rich diversity of soil types. “The Soil Science Society of America divides the world’s soils into 12 ‘orders,’ and Taiwan has 11 of them,” says Hsu. Countless varieties of living things can find a hospitable environment here, and different soils produce different flavors.

Hsu explains that there is only a short distance from production areas to dining tables in Taiwan, and although the logist­ics system is not as well developed as in Japan, the highest mountains and the lowlands are close to each other, and fruits and vegetables from Dayuling (at an altitude of over 2500 meters) can be eaten within a day of being picked. With fresh green vegetables and live seafood, freshness defines Taiwan­ese dining tables, and if you come to Taiwan, we will use this “food power” to express our hospitality.

Flavors passed on for a century

When talking about the flavors of Taiwan, you have to mention Tainan, which has 400 years of history. When we ask Kyle Hsieh, born and bred in Tainan and the owner of the Old House Inn, how people in Tainan show their hospitality, he points to food: “If it’s an old-established restaurant, the tableware used to serve the food must be ceramic; that’s very important. Meanwhile, the iced lotus-root tea just has to be served in a glass, because the cold makes droplets condense on the surface of the glass, and the cool touch of the glass on your lips, along with the smooth slide of the tea down your throat, feel entirely different from what you get using a plastic cup.”

There is also a lot of customization to cater to individual customers’ needs. For example, when ordering a bowl of minced pork on rice, you can ask the owner to make it less fat, to add a little more juice, to use more lean meat, to make the taste lighter, to have just half a bowl of rice, and so on.

Tainan people are also extremely fastidious about the quality of ingredients in their food. For example, visitors to Huang’s Shrimp Restaurant, located in Tainan’s West Central District, will sometimes find the shutters rolled down and a sign hanging out that says, “No shrimp to sell.” Kyle Hsieh explains that this does not mean that the restaurant has sold out of shrimp, but rather that the owner couldn’t find shrimp of sufficient quality that day, so he simply didn’t open the shop. This, says Hsieh, is part of the insistence on “good service” in Tainan.

Switching topics, Hsieh mentions the emphasis Tainan people place on sentiment. “Tainan is an old city, so people value attachment.” Because Tainan developed relatively early on, many shops here have already been passed on to the third or fourth generation. It is no easy feat for a family firm to success­fully pass the baton time after time.

“It’s all about ‘upholding a tradition,’ and not simply ‘flavor.’” Thinking back to the time when these old shops started up, Taiwan was not yet wealthy and restaurant owners depended on small transactions, selling their food one bowl at a time. Some of them gritted their teeth and gradually saved up the money to send their children abroad for their education, always hoping that the next generation would have it easier than they did. But there were others who wanted to preserve these flavors unique to Tainan, and worked hard to communicate with the next generation and smooth the way for them to take over.

Also, many small eateries in Tainan only close for one or two days at the Lunar New Year holiday, when most people take at least five days off. It turns out that they do it for the sake of their faithful old customers, many of whom have gone abroad for study or work and can only come back at the New Year. This kind of sentimental attach­ment between owner and customer is very touching.

Ideal hospitality

For a host, the ideal form of hospitality is for both guest and host to enjoy themselves to the full. However, “when you host foreigners, you must first understand their degree of familiarity with Taiwan and their needs before you can come up with the best possible way of showing hospitality,” says Su Heng-an, director of the Graduate Institute of Food Culture and Innovation at National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism.

Every nation or ethnic group has its own unique flavors. For example, the flavors of sesame oil, root ginger, rice wine, and dried ingredients are deeply implanted in the consciousness of Taiwanese, but don’t neces­sarily conform to the tastes of foreigners, notes Su. Therefore the best way to entertain foreign visitors is to start with foods that are similar between the two cultures, where our experiences can find common ground. Take for example the Taiwanese version of the snack gua bao, which is popular in the West. The concept and execution of putting braised meat in folded steamed bread are similar to those behind a Western hamburger, and gua bao are in fact sometimes called “Taiwanese hamburgers.” Westerners also like chicken and enjoy the texture of deep-fried foods, and people in Taiwan make deep-fried breaded chicken cutlets that are tender and juicy, which will naturally tickle the taste buds of foreign guests. Then there is pearl milk tea, which has taken Japan by storm. Creatively combining a dairy product with snack food, there is no wonder it has found popularity with people in so many countries.

Su Heng-an suggests that one can ideally host a guest by starting with ordinary snack foods, or you can find a very clean restaurant, like the one he recommends in Kaohsiung: Chef Teng Restaurant, which has been in business for more than 30 years. In fact Tim Teng, its founder, originally studied French cuisine before being recruited to work in Kaohsiung. One of the restaur­ant’s specialties is dry braised meat, which, it should go without saying, is genuinely delicious. In addition, the owner has adopted the format of a European-style buffet. Dish after dish piled high with food certainly has the excitement so much sought after at Taiwanese feasts, but one can choose to take a little of each and try a variety of delightful and authentic flavors. Preserving old flavors with new thinking, the owner makes his sentiments felt and makes his guests comfortable—this is indeed the best way to show hospitality.