Taiwanese Seafood Tour - CRAB ARMY + TUNA MADNESS in Donggang | BEST Street Food in Taiwan

Welcome to Chopstick Travel, I'm Luke Martin, and today we have another episode from Taiwan. This time we are in the south of Taiwan in a little town called Danggang. This is an ancient port town that was founded by Koxinga in the 17th century. It is known for its abundance of seafood, and nowadays it flourishes from the tourism, especially from April till June, which is the southern bluefin tuna season, the toro festival. And we are here at the perfect time, so today we are taking you to see the southern bluefin tuna auction that happens here every morning, and then later, of course, we are going to be trying some of the seafood that Danggang has to offer at the Huaqiao Public Market, which is just an abundance of seafood. There's so much good stuff to try there. We woke up bright and early and drove down from Kaohsiung. We are just at the port now, and we're going to go check out the tuna auction. I'm so excited, so let's go! We arrived at about 6am, and they've already unloaded a lot of the tuna. They've got these big cranes that they actually use to offload the tuna, and some of these things go up to 200kg. Now they are all just sitting in carts, and they are waiting to be auctioned off. So the individual cart owner will take his whole cart over, and then they'll auction each one off. We'll go check out the auction in a minute, but just checking out the overall area. There's also some other species. There's swordfish, there is mahi-mahi, a couple other different little things, and it is just really buzzing in here with activity, even though it's only 6am, and so many tunas, and some of them are huge. So at the sound of a whistle, the auction has begun. They just unloaded all the carts and put all of the tuna on the floor. They're using these hooks to move them around, and they're all marked. I'm not exactly sure what the markings mean. It's kind of like another world here, where only the participants, the auctioneers, and the fishermen really know what's going on. But we are just enjoying the intense atmosphere in here, and you can see all of the southern bluefin tuna behind me. I don't know, there's got to be hundreds. place. They started by rolling out the scales, and then all the tuna are separated, I believe, by the different fishermen's catch. They're weighing the tuna, most of them in the 60kg range, but they can get much more than that. We actually did see one swordfish that was absolutely massive, probably around 200kg or even more, and they're weighing them up first, and then I believe they're going to start the bidding process of the auction. But one really unique thing to note is that they use this really interesting tool. The buyers use it in order to check the fat content of the tuna. The higher the fat content, the better the quality. So it's this really interesting tool that pulls out a little piece from the tail area, and then they can check the content of the fat using their fingers, just feeling for how much fat is in there. This is kind of like Taiwan's Tsukiji market from Tokyo. It is crazy in here, there's so many tuna. This ancient-looking vehicle behind me is actually the ice trap, so they're going to cover all of this fish in ice so that they can transport it to wherever it's going, but this thing is ancient-looking, and it still runs perfectly. So things have definitely calmed down in here. If there was one word to describe this place, it would definitely be chaotic. That was just like 30 minutes of craziness, and the last step is to clean the tuna and chop them up into pieces and take them away to the shops to be sold as seafood. That was really fun to watch, and the atmosphere is just out of this world. You can get really up close and personal, unlike the fish market in Tokyo Tsukiji, well now it's called Toyosu, but this place is definitely a really cool place to visit if you want to come down from Kaohsiung super early. I'm not gonna lie, it definitely doesn't smell too good in there, but seeing them pull that little bit of pink meat out is making me a little bit hungry, so we're gonna head down to the public market now, the Huaqiao market, where you can actually taste some of the seafood. We are inside the Huaqiao fish market now. In my opinion, this is Taiwan's best fish market. It's very tourist-friendly, and there is just a huge abundance and variety of seafoods, all kinds of colorful fish, parrot fish, all kinds of clams, different types of shrimp, mantis shrimp, octopus, even stingray. You can really get it all here, and one of the best parts about this market is that you can pick your seafood from these fish vendors and then take it to one of the numerous restaurants which lie on the outside of the market, and they will cook it in your preferred method or whatever they recommend. So I think we're gonna do that later, but first of all, we want to walk around and just take a look and try some of the little snacks that are available within the Huaqiao fish market. So there is one little stall in this market that's really popular, and they're selling fish cakes, and the fish cakes are stuffed with a boiled egg, and they're making them by hand, so they've got the fish cake paste, and then they just take the half or like a quarter of a boiled egg and then put it inside the fish paste directly, and then they're just dropping that little almost like sausage, oblong-shaped fish cake into the oil, frying it up, and then you can just order them one or as many as you want. I think we're just gonna get one to try. So we've got our fish cakes here, and they are actually double fried, I think, in either two different types of oil or two different temperatures, and the second frying is for that exterior, that golden crispy exterior, and there should be a piece of boiled egg on the inside. I think this is gonna be really hot, but let me try to take a big bite. Oh yeah, it's very simple. So it is seasoned with a little bit of salt and pepper, and then she's just skewered them up for us. It's a perfect little snack. Not much to it, it doesn't have a very fishy flavor, and I haven't gotten that egg yet. You can see I gotta get one more bite to get to the egg. Oh yeah, that is nice. I like that little snack. That was a good fish cake. One of the best things about this market is that there's a lot of free samples, so we're on a little bit of a sample hunt. So we spotted this stall that has samples of fish floss. He's got a big pile of it right here. You can see it's got this really unique texture. I don't know how to explain it, but almost like cotton candy or something, and I've got a little cup of it, so let me try. Yeah, actually it's really good. It's not salty, and it's got a very light seafood flavor, and it kind of melts in your mouth, but it's like cotton candy in the way that if you chew it, it gets harder. It's actually really good. This one's a little different. This is tuna with some seaweed and I think actually some sesame seeds mixed in. Let's give this one a try. Different textures, and the sesame seeds add a little crunch to it. That's really good too. So this is one of the most important ingredients or seafoods in all of Danggang, and this is the sakura shrimp. So these things are actually very limited. You can only really get them here in Danggang and one bay in Japan, so they're kind of rare, and these are I think dried, and you can eat them like this. So let me try one. Yeah, actually it's not what you think it's going to be. It's actually very sweet and then not really seafoody. I'm surprised because usually dried seafood has a strong aroma, but it's not as bad, and then that shell is nice and crunchy. That's actually really, really good. So cool too. Oh, I love those sakura shrimp. They would go perfect with a beer. You can just eat them as is. Nothing needed, and there's a lot of samples here, and people are just really friendly. There's one more thing we're hoping to sample. Okay, so this is another one of the specialties of Danggang, and that is the tuna, the sakura shrimp, and then this, which is the oil fish roe. So it's a deep sea fish, and it's different than mullet roe, which is also very popular in Taiwan, and this is more rare, more unique, and they have to do a long process of drying and curing and washing the roe, and she put a little bit of mayonnaise on the top, and I'm not sure if I'm going to like this or not because I'm usually not a fan of the mullet, but I've never tried the oil fish roe. Oh, it's actually not nearly as salty as I thought it was Also a sample for me, a little bit of mayonnaise on top. Let's give it a try. Actually, it's more dry than I was expecting. So actually, we were just talking to the stall owner, and I was actually wrong. We just tried the marlin roe, so swordfish, but this is the oil fish that I was expecting, and look at that. It literally looks like powder cheese. It's got like a cheese texture going to it. Let me try this. Oh, it's like really dense and a little bit chalky. Not much flavor. I actually think the marlin had more of a seafood flavor and not salty either. So this one's actually bluefin tuna. It's a lot bigger. Way more dry, but very much a tuna flavor. So these are all the different egg sacks, and we just tried the marlin, the oil fish, and the tuna, and not as strong a flavor as I was expecting. I think I like the oil fish one the most, but I thought I was eating the oil fish one the first time, but it was actually the second. Really cool. Last but not least for the roe today is actually mahi-mahi roe. I had no idea that you could eat so much of these. Such a big variety. So let's try this one out. Wow. That's totally different. That actually has like little egg textures that burst in your mouth. That's really tasty. That girl was just stuffing us full of the roe, and like Sabrina said, I didn't know you could eat so many different fish types of roe, and the flavors are completely different too. That was really good. I think it's time to stop eating samples and pay for something and sit down at one of these little stalls. So there's a few sashimi sushi stalls within the market, and they have all the tuna laying out front in their display case, and it looks incredible. So you can see the different cuts of the tuna. Here is the extra fatty belly. This is the fatty belly, and then it just goes down the line, medium, and then a couple other different types of fish too. I think we're going to order up some of the lean tuna, and then of course some of the fatty belly. This just looks so good. So there's a little counter seating that you can sit at, and you can spend your whole bank account here if you want. I just asked them how much one of the big chunks of the otoro, the fatty tuna was, and it was 33,000 Taiwan dollars. So that's like well over a thousand US dollars. We're not getting that. We just got I think around 700 Taiwan dollars worth of tuna, and we've got a little bit of green tea while we wait. Our sashimi platter has arrived, and it just looks beautiful. The presentation is incredible. We got 10 pieces of the akami, the back of the tuna. This is the Taiwan tuna, the same tuna we saw this morning, and this was 300 Taiwan dollars for 10 pieces of the akami, and then we got two pieces of the otoro, the fatty tuna, and this was 170 per piece, so 340 for just two pieces versus 300 for all of these, and I'm going to go in for a piece of the akami first. Just look at the coloration there. It's so rich, dark red, and I'm just going to go for a little bit of wasabi here, a tiny bit of wasabi on the top, and then a dip in the soy sauce too. Oh man, that is so good. If that is the lean tuna, I can't imagine how soft and tender that fatty piece is going to be because it just completely melts in your mouth. It's so soft, you really don't even need teeth to eat it. A little spicy hit of wasabi, and then a little bit of saltiness from the soy sauce, but really it's all about that natural tuna flavor. So fresh. They actually age the tuna before serving a sashimi, but I mean the pork's right outside, so it didn't have to travel very far, and that is just really, really high quality stuff. All right, the time has come. We're going to try the fatty tuna now. I'm going to go really light on the wasabi, and you can see that she's actually scored it. So there's these little cuts in there, and this has been a special experience watching the tuna come fresh off the boats and be auctioned off this morning, and now just sitting just a few steps away from where they were bringing the tuna in, and eating some of this fresh raw sashimi tuna, and it is just blowing my mind. All right, time to try the fatty piece. Wow, wow. That is absolutely on another level. It goes in a solid, and as soon as it hits the warmth of your tongue, it completely disintegrates, because the fat content is just so high in there. It is marbled all throughout the muscle, that it just starts melting, and then the muscle just starts falling apart, and it coats your mouth in a film, and then you can taste that fresh tuna underneath that film of fat on your mouth. It's hard to explain, but that is like an experience more than just a taste. It is so good, and we have eaten at some of the best sushi restaurants in the world, and I would argue that this is just on par with those places. That was incredibly good. That was well, well, well worth the price. Incredibly delicious, and we are not full, because that was just a little couple pieces. We're gonna pick out a fish in order to have one of the restaurants cook up for us, and we're gonna get like a Taiwanese style meal now. Check out all these crabs, like a crab army. So we picked this stall to buy our fish from. She's got a complete spread of different things, all different shapes and sizes. Look at this colorful blue parrotfish here, but we went with one of these little red snappers, so it was 180 for one of those, and we will probably get that steamed at the restaurant. Got our fish all ready to go. That didn't take her very long. Let me know down below if you guys know what this is. Some strange looking seafood. So Sabrina and I bought that fish, as you saw, and brought it to the restaurant, and then they will cook it for a fee, and they also have a bunch of other seafood at their restaurant, of course, that you can order up. So we're gonna order a couple different things. You're definitely going to be pestered by some of the people working at the restaurant to get you to sit down, but it is beautiful once you do pick one right along the water here. So we're just waiting for our food to arrive. Early morning at the fish auction, and a long day walking around the market and sampling all those delicious foods. I think a beer is in order. Oh, that is so good. It is way too hot. So here's our first dish. It's the clams. This is something I always order. I love this dish. So it's stir-fried clams with some sauce, some basil, some onions, there's some ginger in there. And just make sure when you're at these places, don't eat the clams that don't open up. So like ones like this that are still closed, because either they weren't healthy or they're just not cooked fully. But these ones are, this one here is okay. Take a little bit of basil, some ginger, onion. Let's try that. The basil is a little overpowering. It's very earthy and a little bit floral, and then strong ginger flavor. Those clams are nice and fresh. Oh, just look at this. It's just swimming in that sauce, which is not an overpowering sauce, but it just saturates those clams. They just get coated in it. Those are kind of big guys too. Look at that. It's a pretty big clam. What's going on here? It's got like antennas or something. So here's our fish. We had it steamed. It's topped in a ton of green onions, ginger, a little bit of chilies, and then it's swimming in a nice thin sauce. And these are one of my favorite ingredients when you eat at these seafood restaurants in Taiwan. These are, I believe they're called gooseberries, and they've got a nice kind of citrusy flavor. So I'm gonna go in right for the eyeball. No, I'm just kidding. I'm gonna go for some of the meat on the side. The texture it takes on from being steamed is really unique. I think this one may have been over steamed because it's a little bit mushy, and there's actually not a whole lot of flavor going on there. But I do like it with the ginger, and then that sauce is a little bit sour and a little bit of soy sauce flavor. But I think it may be overcooked actually. Let me grab a little bit more meat. You can see it's a little bit mushy. I'm going to try it with one of these gooseberries. Oops. Berry is just a burst of flavor. Unfortunately, the meat's a little bit too soft for my liking. Next up is the shrimp. They look like they've been sauteed in some spicy sauce with some onions. And don't worry, I have sanitized and washed my hands, but I'm gonna break this open with my hand. Wow, that is smoking hot. All right, let me take the rest of the shell off. Shrimp is disassembled, but this definitely needs to get dipped in that sauce. And let's give that a try. Oh, that is awesome. Those are cooked perfectly. Still nice and firm, and that sauce has got a little bit of a kick to it. It's a little bit kind of tangy, and then I just love the natural flavor of the shrimp. And you can take the head and kind of suck out some of those juices, which is a good seafood meal. I am a little bit disappointed because this fish is kind of flavorless, but never forget to flip your fish over when you're done on one side. It's kind of a tricky task. Oh no, oh my god. Well, that works, right? Fall off the boat. Yeah, fall off the boat. That's what happens when it's over steamed. So we're just enjoying the end of our meal, finishing up all the food, having a wonderful view of the harbor. This is awesome. The meal was really good. I do like the atmosphere more than the food itself, but most of it was cooked really nice. The clams were really good, and the shrimp was amazing. That was to die for. Never had that kind before. The fish was okay. Definitely overcooked, like Luke said. Not much flavor, but overall the meal was good. What an exciting day. The tuna auction this morning was exhilarating, and it's literally like a Taiwanese Tsukiji fish market, just bustling and so many tuna. And then the Huaqiao fish market, just home to some incredible seafood. Definitely have to say that that fatty tuna was the best thing. Yes, oh my gosh. No question. Amazing. Yeah, incredible. So if you guys enjoyed the video, hit the like button, and consider becoming a Patreon if you want to support our channel. You can get access to some really funny bloopers that we release every month, and also our personally curated food maps from cities all around the world to help you find some awesome food on your travels. And we'll see you on the next episode of Chopstick Travel soon. Bye-bye. Bye.