Day 3 in Taipei, Taiwan, Dec 2015

December 16, 2015September 10, 2019 by ToTos

This is the dinner on Day 2.

We took our challenge to try this restaurant for the first time.

Jen Dow vegetarian restaurant = 蓮香齋 =

Jen Dow is the oldest, and the leading veggie restaurant in Taiwan with over 30 years of history.

It’s a gigantic buffet. All vegetarian food. No meat. No fish. Not even garlic, chinese chive or scallions with such sharp strong stimulations. So Buddism monks can eat out here. As a matter of fact, we did see some monks dining at the buffet.

We wanted to see how they cook all the foods with such limitations.

The place was huge!!! A lot bigger than we expected.

Hundreds of foods. It seems like all the edible plants on the planet is here.

There must be over 500 seats. OMG. We tried to book the day before, but couldn’t get a table for lunch, not for dinner. We barely got a reservation at 17:00. And they asked us if it would be OK if we share the table with others. And they had 500 seats!!!

We were astonished.

The food was great.

Each food were seasoned and cooked nicely, differently, appropriately. Everything tasted rich and savory. Vegetarian food can be plain taste, but they make all this food in such enjoyable ways. I think they season boldly by taking advantage of different broths (vegetable, mushroom or seaweed), mild spices and herbs, fermented pastes like miso, and different vegetable oils and emulsification of them.

They worked efficiently too. The long lines of buffet were maintained clean and nice. Empty buffet servers were refilled right away. Each tables were well taken care of with no empty dishes.

Before we came, “gigantic buffet restaurant” sounded to me like a tourist attraction. It was, in a way. There were too many people and the whole space were turning fast. I didn’t feel comfortable with dining in the restaurant. But the food was not. It was not a tourist buffet which looks great but tastes fake. It was very good food.

I don’t think I want to enjoy dining there again, but I like the food there.

So that was all she wrote for the 2nd day.

SHUANGCHENG STREET NIGHT MARKET = 雙城街夜市 =

The morning of the 3rd day. We had to catch 10:00 am flight. Needed to be there at 8:00am.

We still can hang out for breakfast and buy Taiwanese chicken pilaf to take home. We woke up at 5:30am.

And back to our favorite Shuangcheng Street. This night market is actually a 24-hour market. Night stands move out after mid-night. Day stands come in early in the morning, around 5 am.