FIVE STAR Taiwanese Breakfast Buffet & BACON PYRAMID in Taipei Taiwan

Hey guys, it's Mike Chen. Before getting into this video, I just want to give a big thank you and shout out to the sponsor of this video, AG1. I've been taking AG1 for a couple of years now, and morning routine pretty much hasn't really changed. Scoop or travel pack AG1, 8 to 12 ounces of water, shake it up, and drink. And then a morning workout at the gym or go for a run. Since getting on this routine, my body feels better, I have more energy, and this is so much better than what I used to do, which is buying and then dragging around about a half a dozen bottles of vitamins. They take a lot of space. I just have to constantly keep track of how many I'm taking. And with AG1, just one travel pack or a scoop, I get 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, whole food sourced superfoods. It's just such a convenient way to stay healthy. AG1 always follows the latest research. They go beyond third-party testing to make sure whatever they're giving you, you're getting the highest quality and the best nutritional daily habits on the planet. So when you get your box, you get a pouch of AG1, you'll get a travel bottle, travel packs, and a year's supply of immune-supporting vitamin D, which I highly, highly recommend. So if you want to give it a try, go to my link down below. You'll get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your water. This really is a game-changer when it comes to supporting your immune system because AG1 really does give your body everything it needs for optimal performance every single day. All right, going for my run in. Enjoy the video. Good morning. It's Mike Chen here in Taipei, Taiwan. One thing I love about being here, you could just go on pretty much any street, walk around, just kind of do that Froot Loops thing and just follow your nose, and it'll probably lead you somewhere good. Okay, so I'm just walking around my hotel and see which restaurants are kind of full and it smells good, and this beef noodle soup place I came across, that's smelling really good right now. This is what drew me into this place. Oh my gosh, when this thing is near me, the aroma of the broth is killing me right now. So this is the two-flavor beef. So you got the lean beef and the tendon, some bok choy, scallions, holy moly. You can choose the size of your noodles, and I got thin ones for the broth and the thick ones for the dry version. I smelled this down the block, I kid you not. First, just trying the broth on its own. Wow. This is the Hong Shao broth, and you had the option to put some tomatoes in here, which I did. This broth is so beefy, so beefy. Add some chilies in here, and some vinegar, that spice is so good. The thin noodles are 100% made in-house, it's got that signature bounciness. Really easy to slurp, and it's just absolutely perfect. Wow. That beef is just pure tenderness. I always recommend getting half beef and half tendon in Taiwan, which is usually always an option. When I start slurping, I just don't want to stop until the bowl is gone. Best thing, bring it up to your mouth, take some noodles, slurp some noodles, slurp some broth. This is just a ridiculously satisfying bowl of beef and noodle soup. I'm gonna try the dry ones here. Huh, beautiful egg. A couple pieces of beef, that seems really tender. Some bok choy, scallions, ooh, noodles seem very springy, just from the chopstick feel. Definitely more of a bounce factor, because these noodles are the medium length noodles, so they're more cube. I mean, this is good, but you gotta stick with the traditional beef noodle soup. The soup is everything. I should have ate this first, so I could save the best for last. I mean, this is, nothing wrong with this, I love dry noodles, I do, but Taiwan is all about the broth. And they make the broth taste so good. Dinner is gonna be at the largest night market in Taipei, Shilin Night Market. This is gonna be a lot of fun. Oh, this is what I've been smelling as soon as I got here, a giant fried piece of chicken. If you don't know, night markets are always around temples, because when it started, it was just really targeting people who were heading to the temples, when they were leaving, they wanted something to eat, and that's why the streets around the temples are lined with food stalls. First bite of food I'm getting, this is like a little takoyaki-looking thing. It's a combination of egg and shrimp and cheese, you can just kind of pick it up by the shrimpy tail. This is really good, I've never had this before. The bottom's like toasted, like a little takoyaki, there's egg in here, so it tastes partially like a takoyaki, partially like a cheesy scrambled egg, and of course, a little sweet shrimp in the middle. It's really good, and you can choose different flavors on top. So I got pepper, you can also get seaweed, or chilies. Pepper's really good with this, I like it. I always have a weakness whenever I walk past a food stall using a blowtorch, blowtorch steak. This tastes really tender, but definitely needs more salt. I know there's a cumin on here, a lot of nice smoky char flavor though. Went back, asked for more salt, no, this is pretty darn good. The pepper bun is one of my all-time favorite Taiwanese night market food items. This thing is incredible. It's stuffed full of chives and meat, and baked inside these little custom ovens, where they stick to the side of the oven, kind of like a nun. I would break this apart, but it's full of hot, delicious juice, so I'm just gonna take a bite, you guys can see. It's so toasty on the outside, beautiful sesame crust inside, the bread is soft, it's fluffy, and inside of that, look at this, juicy meat fillings with chives, and all that juice from the meat is soaked into the bun, but this is chock full of juice. Make sure to employ the bite and slurp method, so you don't waste any of that delicious meat juice. Also, this thing is called a pepper bun, it's very peppery. This thing is meaty, it's savory, it's fatty, it's smoky, it's peppery, it's flaky, toasty, and sesame-y. Basically, all the yis accomplished in this one bun. Since this is my last night here in Taiwan, I figured I'd hit up a couple of different night markets. You know, Matt, there's a whole night market, and I just got a, they call this a bomb scallion pancake. This is a very flaky scallion pancake, also, usually, scallion pancake is cooked on a flat top. This is deep-fried, so this is deep-fried scallion pancake with an egg. This is really good. Mmm, it's so crispy, and flaky, and fluffy, and as you chew, this really nice umami flavor releases, I think maybe from the soy sauce? Woo! The egg yolk just popped, and it's just oozing everywhere, making an already-rich pancake even richer. This is excellent, 9 out of 10, I'd say. I haven't had this in a while. Wow, fried milk. It's basically fried condensed milk, and it's so good. Light, thin, crunchy batter inside, or is it just pudding? Mmm. The ang yuan is basically a cold mochi ball with filling, and these are either green bean filling or red bean filling, and that's a red bean. That is very QQ, and it's very QQ, I always like this stuff, like a super-refreshing mochi. Ah! This looks and smells incredible! This is a really interesting food stall, so what they do here is there's a giant pot of stewed beef parts, and you can smell all the herbs inside that giant pot, along with that stewed meat. Look at that slice of beef, all the tendon coursing through this, look how soft this is! And it's just being stewed until the meat is basically falling apart, soft. So I got some tripe, I got some tendon, I got some lean pieces, there's some intestines in there as well, also some chicken feet in there as well. Oh, these pieces just look so good! This is some of the tenderest piece of beef you'll find anywhere. I mean, this is borderline melt-in-your-mouth. The sauce they cooked in is delicious, it's a little bit of heat, and you can definitely taste the spices like the star anise. The tendon is the best piece. I haven't tried the tripe yet, but tendon, yes! So soft and gelatinous-y, and the flavor of the stock has 100% steeped through all of that. Yeah, you taste more of the spice, more of the flavor, oh yeah, it's such a good piece. The tripe, mmm, that's really good as well! It's like a little meaty sponge that's soaked up all the flavor. If you want, you could just get some of that, take it home, put it over ramen, put it in your rice, eat it with your congee, this would be good on anything! One last pepper bun before leaving the night market. This place, Rouhe, is the best pepper bun in Taiwan, maybe. At least, the first time I've ever had one of these was at this stall right here. Just as good as I remember, super, super peppery. The bun is almost mochi-like on the inside. Perfect, last bite of night market food before leaving Taiwan. Breakfast again at the Shangri-La Hotel. I love all you can eat Taiwanese buffets. First off, flaky scallion pancakes stuffed with marinated strips of tofu. This is awesome. My one regret, I should have put some hot oil in here. I love this so much. Tofu sandwiches, especially tofu strips like this, is dry, so it's really chewy and flavorful. And when I was a kid in China, we used to run outside between classes and there would be a vendor selling something like this, but it would be like a mala tofu stuffed inside a similar bun. In the sauce they marinate the tofu in, it tastes a little sweet, tons of umami, so some sort of Hong Shao sauce, it goes perfect with this. I wish that pancake would be a little more fresh, a little more flaky, but this is delicious. Chase that with some hot oil pig ears. Ooh, that's really nice. The pig ear is spicy and nummy. I'm gonna add this to my tofu sandwich. Also, if you're not used to seeing pig ears on a breakfast buffet, this is just Asian bacon. Also, I love this. This is pickled cabbage with rice noodles. Super crunchy, super refreshing. They also have a variety of juices here as well. Freshly squeezed watermelon juice. They have a live cooking station there as well, you can make your eggs to order. And also, they have scallion pancakes with scallions and I think some meat floss inside. It's not meat floss, it's anchovies and vermicelli noodles. Pancake's nice and chewy. I like the egginess. I love the anchovies. This is pork over noodles and they use fatty pieces of pork where the fat kind of melts into the noodles. Splash some hot oil on this as well. That is a yummy dish. They have all sorts of sauces and toppings as well, so I put some Chinese sour green beans on here as well for some additional crunch. Then this noodle is all sort of sauced up. And typically when you go to a noodle station at a buffet, usually it's probably beef noodle soup or it's curry or curry noodle or laksa, something like that. This is uniquely delicious and interesting. This breakfast buffet is huge. There's a pastry section, there's a western breakfast section, noodle section, there's a congee section, dim sum section, also Indian food section. Got some local Taiwanese oyster congee. That's delicious. Fried dough in here to soak up the oysters. Oysters are big and plump. Add some white pepper in here for a little bite. This is so good. Also a classic, but one of my favorite congees ever. Century eggs and pork. They also add some pickled vegetables, toss some of that in there, some meat floss. I love a good congee section at a buffet. So there's also a Japanese section on this buffet. Soba noodles. Light and refreshing. There's also an onsen egg. Look at that. That is so perfect. Dip my naan in my onsen egg. I like how this is such a cross-cultural breakfast. One last thing I gotta get. Custard bun. My flight is in about five hours. So I'm gonna go back, pack, I'll go grab some lunch before the flight. Last meal here in Taiwan. I am at the Shanghai Pavilion and there's a couple of dishes here I really want to try out. The first one is a dish I first had in the Philippines. It's a pork belly shaped like a pyramid. It's basically a pyramid of bacon. And then they have a Peking duck dish here that is, well, it's pretty lit, literally. I mean this is a feast from the sea to the land to the air. A pyramid of bacon. We got a flaming crispy duck and then a grouper soup and this grouper looks gnarly. So they're saying this grouper is fished from really deep in the ocean. Look at this teeth on this sucker. Wherever this thing is, I don't want to be swimming there. And also some fried crab dumplings. Everything looks amazing. Pork belly pyramid. This dish takes one hour in the steamer and the chef basically slices up the pork belly into these long ribbons and it forms, like I said, pretty much into a pyramid. And the gravy on the bottom is from the vegetables that's inside this pyramid. So yeah, there's actually things in here. One big difference between the pyramid of bacon I had last time and this time is that last time I think I was able to kind of pull it out like a noodle. This time the cut is really, really, really thin. And it's so tender to the point where if you just pull on it a little bit, it just kind of breaks apart. So they put it with some pickled vegetables into a steamed mantou bun. And this is a very common dish here in Taiwan. Oh my god. This is so unbelievably melty. I just took a little nibble of the pork belly itself. That thing is just absolutely tenderness. Along with some crunch from the pickled vegetable. The flavor is rich. It's deep. It's so full of umami. I mean the melty pork contrasted by that crunchy pickled vegetable inside pillowy steamed bun. It's just pure magic. Then dip the bun into the sauce. That's such a simply delicious dish. Everything about this is overwhelming in the best way possible. The meat is overwhelmingly tender. The flavor is overwhelmingly robust. The pickled vegetables releases the perfect amount of textural compliment as well as a delicious fragrant flavor. I mean just look at this thing. One little pull and the pork comes apart. Next bun I'm making, I'm putting a ton of pork belly in there. Dunk it into that delicious sauce. Scrape some of the veggies from the inside. And the ingredients here is very classic Shanghainese ingredients. Of course this being a Shanghainese restaurant, it plays to the classic ingredients but this is definitely a more modern, more fun twist. Mmm. That's about as tender of a pork belly as you can ever find anywhere. This dish absolutely knocked it out of the park for me. I'm so excited about this. Ooh. This is the best version of this dish I've ever had in my life. Oh no joke. This is a popular dish you see a lot in Sichuan cooking. It's usually slices of fish with Chinese sauerkraut and chilies and it's sour and it's spicy and it's numbing because there's peppercorn in there as well. Ain't nothing taste like this. This beats all the other dishes by a million percent. This is incredible. If you're a big fan of sauerkraut fish, that dish, if you ever had it, this is king. I mean this thing is so good, it should move into the bacon pyramid. So many things is happening when you take a simple sip. You taste that suancai, the sourness from the sauerkraut and right away you're hit by the chilies. The heat from the chilies just lingers on your tongue and then the numbness comes from the peppercorn. And it's all so extreme at the same time, delicate and comforting. And that's before taking a bite of the fish. Fish is deliciously flaky. Very mild. I feel like the fish actually balances the flavor out. The mild fish flavor kind of eases down the burn and the numbness and the sourness, making this such a perfect balance. If you're ever in Taiwan, like I said, you like this dish, come here and try their version out. I changed my mind. Okay, next time I see this fish in the ocean, I'm swimming towards it with a pair of chopsticks. Unbelievably good. Crab fried dumplings. Dumplings kind of reminds me of Princess Amidala with all this headdress going on. Even the crispy part's really good. The skin of these dumplings is so luminous and thin. Inside sweet tasting crab and shrimp. Chase that with the fish soup. That actually goes really well together. The dumplings kind of bring a different type of sweetness to this dish. Dunk the dumplings into the fish soup. A perfect match with the sweet and subtle seafood filling inside. The outside layer is so crunchy and fun too. All right, there's one more dish I gotta try. I feel like I've been neglecting it. I hope it's still good. This is their fire roasted duck and I definitely should have bit into this a lot sooner. Dunk it in a little salt and pepper. And what's really interesting about this duck is, first the duck is marinated and then fried. They also have to make sure that they cannot hurt the skin of the duck at all. There can't be any holes or cuts. And then from the neck, because it's called the eight treasure duck, eight different ingredients are stuffed inside including rice, different spices. After it comes out, gao liang jiao, which is a very popular liquor in Asia, is poured on and the duck is set on fire. Now this is not just for show. It's a cool show, but that's not just for show. The fire is used to burn out the excess fat on the duck. Dip it in salt and pepper. Oh, it's such a delicious piece of duck. One thing I forgot to mention. There's no bones in the duck. So they take out all the leg bones, even the neck bones, all taken out because they need to stuff all these ingredients inside. Like I said, there's rice, there's skin cone that's inside. So this is a labor-intensive dish and it's so delicious. I love tasting the eight treasures that's inside. The flavor is a little nutty, a little earthy. The skin is so light and airy and it's true, I had about two, three pieces already. It is missing that signature oiliness and fattiness that you would typically get from a duck. Oh, that skin is so light and it just tastes like crispy air. Pretty much just tastes like a duck chip. This has truly been an unforgettable last meal here in Taiwan. I mean, Taiwan has a lot of street food that I absolutely love. Definitely try all that, but definitely come here and try this as well. Especially that fish soup. That thing definitely has me hooked. As always guys, all the places I went to is down below for you. Thank you all so much for watching. Until we eat again. See you later.