West Meets East in Taiwan

When I travel abroad, I generally like to eat a good amount of local food to see what the average native person eats in that country and what is popular, etc. However, I don't think that every single meal or morsel of food must be something new to my taste buds, so I do not object to eating a bit of Western food while traveling in the East.

In Taiwan, I'd say that we ate a fair share of both Asian and Western cuisines, and thankfully, we avoided fast food for the most part. Full disclosure: We did eat Domino's pizza one rainy evening, and I had a late-night McDonald's hot fudge sundae as well.

One interesting 'American' restaurant we tried was a Coca-Cola themed place in Ximending called Coke Forest. My tuna sandwich and fries were pretty tasty, and the cherry Coke was made with actual cherry syrup and maraschinos! David ordered a 'Chicago burger', which was not in fact a hamburger, but slices of pork meat on a bun.

Another cool place that we went was Le Ble D'or, which is a restaurant and microbrewery discovered by our friends Gavin and Rachael. The beer came in steins of three different sizes: 350cc, 500cc or 1,000cc. We girls ordered the middle size while of course the guys went for the largest option, which was obscenely big.

The food at the brewery was alright, but nothing out of the ordinary. I had spicy vegetarian spaghetti, and I was proud of myself for eating it despite the surprising level of hotness. Additionally, they had mozzarella sticks on the menu, and they were delicious even without the traditional marinara sauce.

Mozzarella sticks

Calamari

I also had dinner with Gavin and Rachael at the restaurant in their hotel while David went to see My Bloody Valentine in concert. It was a nice Western affair with white tablecloths and a set dinner, along with a la carte choices. I chose the latter because I had eaten too much at lunch, and my fig and parma ham salad was just as it should be.

Rachael's seafood risotto

For most of my life, I have not been a huge soda drinker, and that remains true today. However, I was completely surprised to find sasparilla, root beer's kissing cousin, for sale in all the 7/11 stores in Taiwan. Because of this novelty factor, I bought one and found that it tasted very much like it would at home, though perhaps a little sweeter.

All in all, I would say that there was no shortage of Western food in Taiwan, or at least in Taipei. And, not to leave anyone out, there was other ethnic food as well, including Japanese, Korean and Indian.