Dan Zi Kitchen, Taiwan
Dan Zi Kitchen in Taipei is a restaurant where you can get a taste of some of the Taiwanese street foods without crowd surfing in the night market. The restaurant has made a southern Taiwanese delicacy, Danzai noodles, as their specialty.
I was here for dinner with a friend, together we each ordered a bowl danzai noodle with regular noodles, and rice noodles. We also shared 3 appetizers: bamboo shoot salad, pork jowl, and chinese water spinach (kong xing cai) with beef.
I loved all the appetizers. The bamboo shoot was in season, and they were so sweet and tender. It was served with a side of mayo, to give it extra sweetness. It was served chilled, a very refreshing appetizer for the summer. The pork jowl, served with ginger, garlic and sweet soy dipping sauce was super tender.
Chinese water spinach is one of my favorite vegetables and the best ones are in Taiwan. This chinese water spinach with beef and satay sauce was so tasty and reminded me of my childhood. If you are visiting Taiwan, you got to try this dish.
Danzai noodles, a street food is usually served in a small bowl (cost about $1) and consists of: noodles, shrimp, braised pork sauce, green onions, bean sprouts and a slice of pork. You can order this in a soup or dry. The noodles were really tasty and surprisingly light. Besides the braised pork, everything else was pretty much boiled. I thought the braised pork sauce was going get too salty, but it’s got just enough salt and flavor from the soy sauce.
I don’t really remember the last time I had danzi noodles, but I liked it a lot. Everything was so tasty for me here, and very ‘Taiwanese’. The restaurant sort of brought street food into a nicely decorated restaurant, which is nice because otherwise in the summer, you’d be sweating and eating this at a street vendor. And of course, the price is a little bit more expensive then you would find elsewhere.
