From night markets to tea plantations, Rick Bayless leaves no avenue unexplored as he tastes his way through Taipei. Here the American chef shares what flavors he’ll never forget. Get ready to pick up the culinary journey yourself during the 2026 Rotary International Convention.
Chef Rick Bayless tours a tea plantation.
Photography by I-Hwa Cheng
Food stalls famous for quality
I was only a few steps into the Ningxia Night Market when the sweet potato balls caught my eye. The golden and purple spheres glistened as the cook pulled a tray from the hot oil and hoisted them into a stainless-steel bowl the size of a kid’s bathtub.
The problem was I couldn’t figure out how to extract myself from the human river that bore me along to order a bagful of what my gut told me I would likely never forget. Coasting along with the crowd, I thought I might be able to lift both feet off the ground and keep moving. It wasn’t the same feeling I’d experienced once in a Mexico City metro stop — that was a rebellious crowd. This was more like being borne along by a crowd spirited by the anticipation of delicious happiness.
Now, sweet potatoes are probably not an ingredient that’s top of mind when you think of Asian cuisine. But from their birthplace in the Americas, the tubers traveled on huge galleons as early as the mid sixteenth century, moving across the Pacific to Manila, then slowly wandering from one Asian culture to another, finding warm — if not celebrated — welcomes nearly everywhere. Including Taiwan, where they now attract long lines when cooked, mashed, mixed with tuberous starches, and transformed into those shiny little balls.
Once I extricated myself from the enthusiastic crowd, I discovered what I can only describe as pure delight. Those ping-pong sized spheres, known as known as di gua qiu, are unexpectedly hollow and lightly sweet, with a hint of the sweet potato’s characteristic earthiness. I laughed a little as I popped another and then another into my mouth.
From left: At Taipei’s markets, you’ll find crab, fried taro balls with preserved egg yolk and pork floss, and oyster omelets.
The Ningxia Night Market is famous for the quality of its food stalls. Head of the list, at least in my opinion, is Yuan Huan Pien Oyster Egg Omelet. I could watch the ballet of red-aproned cooks working the circular griddles for hours. The briny sweetness of the oysters, the chewy-tender texture of the batter, the richness of the egg, the lightness of the greens — it was obvious why locals line up for hours to tuck into one of these beauties.
The next hour was a blur of fried taro balls with preserved egg yolk and pork floss, perfect mochi with pulverized toasted peanuts and sesame for dipping, those pork belly-filled, fold-over steamed buns (here called gua bao) that have become popular across the United States. Though everyone had warned me away from it, I fell in love with — or maybe it’s more accurate to say I had a momentary crush on — stinky tofu. I contend that anyone who’s taken with punchy blue cheese like Roquefort will like this medium-firm tofu that’s been marinated in a complex fermented brine.
Dihua Street
For the sheer pleasure of it, I’ve practiced cooking Asian food all of my adult life, relying on well-respected guides like the Wei-Chuan Cooking Books to share the techniques for a perfect stir-fry. Our copies of Chinese Cuisine and Chinese Snacks were brought back by my wife, Deann, from her year teaching English in Taiwan back in the 1970s.
What I didn’t know is that the soy sauce that the exacting and encyclopedic books was likely calling for tastes different than other soy sauces. Better. The artisan local soy sauce is made from black — not the typical yellow — soybeans that ferment for months and months. Tasting Taiwanese soy sauce for the first time is like that first taste of Pappy Van Winkle’s 23-year-old bourbon when you’ve only been used to Jim Beam 5-year. Rich and round, complex and satisfying.
I discovered my favorite artisan soy sauce in, of all places, a meat-product store along Dihua Street. I loved passing an hour or two wandering the area’s lively shops, their goods spilling out onto the sidewalks. Piles of tropical fruit, thousands of spice packets and jars, a variety of dried seafood that made my head spin. That’s where I found the famous tree-grown mountain pepper (maqaw) that seasons many Taiwanese dishes.
And that’s where I found the great soy sauce. Jiang Ji Hua Lung is a nationally renowned store owned by Rotarian Hsien-chiao Chiang. The store specializes in cured, dried pork — think of it as pork jerky — that’s gently seasoned with soy and sugar. They’re famous for jerky-like sheets, but it was the compressed heart shapes (formed from chopped jerky) and the pork “paper” — so thin it crunched like a potato chip — that I found wonderous. The former reminded me of Chinese sausage you might pack for a trip to the moon. The latter was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, its fragile texture virtually disappearing when it came in contact with my tongue, leaving only the aura of pure cured pork, sweet and a little salty.
And there, near the door, were cases of artisan soy sauce in their classic slender glass bottles. Once you learn to recognize the bottle’s shape, you’ll easily pick it out in the upscale grocery stores that you’ll encounter on the ground floor of fashionable shopping malls around Taipei.
Tea and truffles
Driving southeast from Taipei, we wound our way through sharp mountain peaks and past dozens of farmhouses with adjacent rice paddies until finally descending into Yilan County. As far as my eyes could see, the earth was filled with cabbages. Straight row after straight row of cabbages, field after field of cabbages, creating a haphazard patchwork of brassicas destined for the markets in Taipei and beyond.
Clearly, in a world of supply and demand, Taiwan appeared to have enough cabbages, which led one of the local farmers, Jinrong Huang, an Indigenous village chief, to work with Rotary on an outside-the-box idea.
At Jinrong’s farm, nearly a decade before, he had planted a grove of oak trees, and for the last few years he’s been inoculating the earth beneath them with spores he hoped would grow into truffles — an agricultural product with vastly more value than the over-planted cabbages that surrounded his oaks.
Jinrong got out of his car wearing heavy leather boots and a resolute look. His two squirmy dogs shot into the trees like they’d been exploded from a gun. One dog went straight to the base of a tree and, with a constant, fast whimper wagged his tail so forcefully that I thought he might hurt himself. These were the dogs he was training to hunt the truffles.
A few more minutes down the valley, we came to Yaba’s Mountain guesthouse. Nestled into a bend of the road, the simple two-story structure kept watch over the four-dozen long, tightly packed rows of jade-color tea bushes that rose high up the mountain in front. We piled into the back of a small four-wheel drive truck, then bumped our way up the rutted road to the top.
Other than the beautiful vistas and the thrill of running your hands through the small, densely packed leaves of the camellia plants — tea is in the camellia family — visiting a tea plantation is less exciting than visiting a place that grows, say, berries or peaches. There’s nothing fresh to taste. As with coffee and vanilla, the brilliant flavors of tea develop during the fermenting, drying, and/or roasting process.
Back down at the guesthouse, we watched our host give a quick rinse to a big cup he’d filled with the balled up dry leaves of lightly fermented, high-mountain oolong from the fields we’d just seen. Then he filled the cup, let it steep a minute or so and strained the liquid off into the classic two-ounce porcelain cups for us to taste. It was richly complex, fresh and gently floral, a hint of bitter, a hint of sweet. Working over a perforated stainless-steel box to catch splashes, our host was fast and slap-dash, re-steeping and straining the leaves, round after round, for us to taste how the flavor evolved. (My favorite was the second steeping.)
The flavors hovered in my head like the fading notes of an unrivaled string quartet. It was unlike any tea I’d tasted.
From left: A Japanese tea ceremony; tea is served with an assortment of complimentary snacks; Bayless and his wife, Deann, enjoy beef noodle soup; preparing crunchy breakfast youtiao
Q texture
We hadn’t been more than three hours off the plane when we found ourselves descending the stairs at the Regent hotel into the open dining room of the Azie Restaurant, where we met our hosts, Rotarians Jimmy Chih-Ming Lai and Wenny Lin. We were there to eat beef noodle soup, one of Taiwan’s standout dishes. While beef noodle soup sounds commonplace, even downright unexciting, the Taiwanese version is unique, even thrilling. Brought by immigrants to the island in the middle of the 20th century during the Chinese civil war, it is now considered emblematic of the island’s cooking. There’s a simpler, clear version that is rich with beef bone broth, and there’s a thicker, even richer version that’s seasoned with spicy Sichuan fermented fava bean paste (doubanjiang) and, if you wish, Sichuan peppercorns.
We drank a remarkable cold sparkling oolong tea as we tucked into the steaming bowls of goodness. For me, all that deliciousness was almost eclipsed by the noodles themselves. These weren’t like the typical wheat-flour noodles I was expecting. Instead, they had a slight chewiness to them, a little resilience, a little bounce. Grateful we had bilingual folks at the table, I asked to speak to the chef. They were made partially with yam flour, he said.
That’s when I began to understand what the Taiwanese call “Q texture.” People on this island are obsessed with texture, and one of their favorites is that brilliant spot between resilient and soft, chewy and tender, sticky and gummy. Though it’s not a texture I grew up with, I’d encountered it before in perfectly cooked beef tendon and some glutinous rice preparations. It’s the texture that I fell for in bubble tea. When we got to the night market, that texture rose to my consciousness in the brilliant oyster omelet and again in the celebrated mochis.
Taiwanese breakfast
When my wife lived in Taichung back in the 1970s, she fell in love with Taiwanese breakfast. She has told me about sitting in roadside stands, dipping the crullers they call youtiao into warm doujiang (soy milk) and relishing every minute of it. It was an experience I’d never had.
So, when Henry Hsieh, an energetic young Rotarian with a food-centric Instagram account, picked us up early one morning for a visit to the Binjian Market, I was secretly hoping that breakfast would be the first stop. Little did I know that not only was he planning breakfast, but he was planning it at the legendary Fuhang Soy Milk, the Michelin-recognized spot that on some days more than 5,000 people visit.
Rick Bayless (right) shops at Binjian Market with Henry Hsieh, a Rotarian with a food-centric Instagram account.
We walked from the parking garage toward a monolithic gray concrete building with a couple of lifeless shops in the ground-level arcade. That’s when it dawned on me that the line of people I saw — stretching longer than a city block — was patiently waiting to get into Fuhang. “People start lining up at 5 a.m. for their 5:30 open,” Henry laughed. With a swift grin, he said, “Follow me.”
Like a school of salmon swimming upstream, we worked our way through the crowd that was descending a flight of stairs, until we reached the restaurant’s exit. We followed Henry toward a kitchen on one end of what appeared to be a food court. A young guy with a backwards baseball cap and a half apron gave Henry a joyful hug, then waved us into the kitchen. Turns out he’s the grandson of the folks who started Fuhang.
We watched as cooks rolled out thick, rectangular breads and passed them to others to slap on the sidewalls of barrel ovens (I’ve seen similar ovens in the Middle East, India, and southern Mexico), cooking them to a rich golden brown in minutes. Other cooks coated thinner rectangles with sesame, and further on, others deeply creased strips of yet another dough to fry into youtiao.
The rhythm was captivating, the production astounding. The scene felt almost operatic.
The young man handed Henry a bag and we made our way back to the car. We couldn’t cut the hour-long line, but we could get takeout. Now, I hadn’t imagined that my first taste of the legendary Fuhang restaurant would be in the backseat of a sleek, late-model black sedan, but I couldn’t wait to dip my crunchy-fresh youtiao into warm soy milk —some of the best, nuttiest I’ve ever tasted.
Kitchen comrades
Henry had yet another surprise for us at Din Tai Fung, the wildly successful restaurant chain that has popularized xiaolongbao (soup dumplings) all over the world. There we donned aprons and hair nets and set ourselves up at long tables. We were shown the sixteen perfect pleats that encased the cold, gelatinous meat-broth filling in thin rounds of dough, then turned loose to try it ourselves. I was again reminded that crafts like these take years to perfect. But popping a perfectly made, perfectly seasoned xiao long bao from the steamer basket into my mouth convinced me that it was a craft worth mastering.
Journalist Monica Eng, chef Rick Bayless, and his wife, Deann Bayless, make dumplings at Din Tai Feng Restaurant in Taipei.
Henry had arranged for me to cook with a couple of other chefs at his restaurant Wildwood, a sleek, comfortable spot that specializes in wood-grilled fish and steaks, dishes that echo his training at New York’s French Culinary Institute. When we arrived, I unpacked the bounty of ingredients I’d found at the Binjian Market and met the two other chefs I’d be cooking with. Preparing food alongside chefs in another country is an opportunity I jump at. Even when we don’t share a language, the communication through food — the way we handle it, the way we combine flavors, the way we work with fire – is fluent and full.
Jarry Liu, the chef de cuisine of Wildwood, built a wood fire for us to cook on. Rotarian Jay Liu had driven up from Taichung to be my other comrade in the kitchen and attend the Rotary meeting that was happening at the restaurant later that night. He was a chef who’d had great success working for a decade or longer in the United States, but one who’d returned to Taiwan to be closer to family. He had found community in the Taichung Rotary club since coming home.
I thought chef Jarry was going to grill some fish to show off a specialty of Wildwood, but he couldn’t stay away from the cockscombs I’d found at the market. Before I knew it, he’d started braising them, then he gave them a brief tour on the grill and a lively adornment with pickled red onions and cilantro. They were spectacular.
Bayless chats with the chefs at Wildwood, where wood-grilled fish and steaks are the house specialty.
By the time I started grilling my chicken thighs to flavor with a lively blend of herbs, roasted garlic, green chile and lime, chef Jay was deep into another poultry dish, the famous Taiwanese Three Cup Chicken that braises the bird with sesame oil, rice wine, and soy sauce, then sweetens the reduced cooking liquid to a shiny glaze and garnishes the polished-looking dish with Thai basil and red chiles.
We talked fire and its infinite possibilities. We talked ingredient proportions and history and the role of food in cultural identity. We talked childhood and how our tastes are crafted by family and community, about how those tastes become so deeply rooted that they feel like the very fabric of our beings. As we sat down with the restaurant’s cooks and servers to share our dishes, I cautiously watched as those gathered scraped tiny tastes of the sauce from the meat (Taiwanese food isn’t very spicy, so they were no doubt worried about all the chiles I’d used), before giving a big thumbs up. The dish was gone in a flash. I was more than a little relieved.
Even the 7-Elevens are unforgettable
While not technically a flavor — more like a remarkable collection of flavors — I will never forget the 7-Elevens. My first day in Taiwan, I’d gone to the one near the hotel, not because I needed anything (I may have bought a cup of coffee), but because I wanted to start cataloging the offerings.
There is a warmer in pretty much every Taiwanese 7-Eleven filled with tea eggs — hardboiled eggs with a random pattern of cracks all over their shells, each crack darkened by the soy-flavored tea broth they’re bathing in. These may be the tastiest, healthiest, most easily available snack in Taiwan.
On the flip side from healthy are the potato chips. There are dozens to choose from, in the most bewildering variety of flavors. Lays seems to be a popular brand, offered with roast chicken seasoning, baked potato seasoning, scallion pancake, pork sausage and seaweed seasonings. Potato chips are an easy investment, and these might be some of the most memorable bites on a visit to Taiwan.
Another quick food option:
Nanmen Market
Da’an District
Find more than 200 vendors across four floors, including a popular food court serving Taiwanese specialties.
A lot of travelers and locals eat many of their meals at the ubiquitous 7-Elevens, warming packaged entrees in the shop’s microwaves and enjoying them in the little dining areas most of the shops offer. The entrees were affordable, and their names sounded delicious enough to try. I counted 75 choices. As you’d imagine, there were a host of rice and noodle bowls, but there were all kinds of Italian, French and American entrees as well.
And if you’re looking for liquid refreshment beyond the ever-present sodas, the 7-Eleven has a jaw-dropping variety of plain and flavored ice teas, hot teas, and bubble teas. I’m sure the small store near my hotel had at least a hundred choices.
Though all the shop’s options will quench your thirst, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the bubble tea, due to the full experience that beverage can offer. For that, we went to one of the branches of a teahouse that claims to have invented it, Chun Shui Tang. The story goes that the owners shook tapioca pearls with milk and tea back in 1986 and the world has never been the same. But unlike all the sweet, fruity versions of bubble tea you find all over the planet, the original is elegantly crafted with slightly chewy tapioca pearls and a refreshing, not-too-sweet blend of black tea, powdered creamer, and cane sugar. It was both elementally delicious and, ultimately, inspirational.
Food from the heart
Even thinking back on all the brilliant food we’d enjoyed, the meal we ate at a food kitchen established by Rotarians in Taipei was one of the most memorable. The Rotary service project started back in 2016 as a way to recycle less-than-perfect produce into meals for low-income families, older adults living alone, and others. Through a series of Rotary grants, they transformed an unused city building into a gleaming stainless-steel kitchen where they teach unemployed workers to make box lunches, and, with the help of volunteers, get them delivered to those in need.
We climbed the stairs to the second story meeting/teaching facility and found spots around the horseshoe-shaped table. When I opened the paperboard box that was set in front of me, the careful beauty the cooks had created greeted me like a broad smile. A large head-on prawn was propped onto a savory-sweet piece of braised bok choy over rice. Flanking the prawn was a slice of green-onion omelet and around the back were some colorful peppers, a little stir-fried cabbage, and a spoonful of a very flavorful noodle dish.
The flavors were so simple, so homey, so perfect. And they made me so happy — happy like when you eat food that’s made with love.
Rick Bayless is the chef and co-owner of award-winning restaurants including Frontera Grill and the Michelin-starred Topolobampo in Chicago. He is the host of public television’s Emmy-nominated Mexico: One Plate at a Time, an award-winning author, a philanthropist, and a YouTube creator.
This story originally appeared in the November 2025 issue of Rotary magazine.