The Inside Scoop

So the other day I was on my way to an appointment downtown and I remembered that I hadn't eaten lunch yet. So off I went in search of a small restaurant where I could get a good-sized meal for a small-sized price tag. I was in a part of town that I didn't know very well so I just kept wandering up and down streets looking slightly lost until I saw an alley with a few small "restaurants." One place seemed particularly interested in getting me to come try their food so I decided to oblige. First I said though, "I'm vegetarian," and waited to see if they had any suitable food. The three waiters/managers/cooks stopped and looked at each other and started shaking their heads until the lady at the sink said yes, they could get me something with just vegetables and was noodles ok? I said that was fine and they ushered me inside to sit down.

So I found an empty table and sat on the plastic stool to wait. By the way, here in Taipei when it is rush hour time for meals, you don't have the luxury of having your own table. If the restaurant is small and there are a lot of people inside, you will have to share a table with perfect strangers, but it's considered normal and everyone usually politely ignores everyone else so you can still feel like you are eating by yourself ... Sort of.

So anyway, I barely had time to rub my wooden chopsticks together before they set before me a steaming bowl of noodles and bean sprouts with some sort of sauce that tasted quite nice.

I was bored so I picked up a plastic menu and began trying to read it. Here's what it looked like:

I could make out the words like soup, noodles, large, small, meat, duck...or was it bird? I wasn't sure. And what was that word before bird...I decided to take out my dictionary and look it up. 

I took out my iPod and began tracing the first character onto the screen. "Ya" or "duck" popped up in the English translation. Ok, I thought, I was right that it was some sort of bird. Then I began tracing the second character. It looked like a combination of "moon" and the second character for soup (except it didn't have the symbol for water in front of it). I was curious what kind of dish this was and waited as the dictionary looked up the options. I choose the correct character from a list and looked at the translation: "intestines." Ugh. Really? I squinted at the screen again. 

Then I began to wonder what the other words were that I didn't recognise on the menu. I began tracing furiously. "Liver" "pellet" "tongue" ... and various animal names like oyster and pig popped up on my screen. 

I'm used to eating at restaurants that also serve beef noodles, Hawaiian pizza, and chicken fried rice, but if I had known I was eating at a restaurant where 90% of the menu comprised of various animals' insides, I probably wouldn't have gone inside. Next time you tell the chef you are vegetarian, if they hesitate for longer than 5 seconds (give them time to process your pronunciation first) then my advice to you is to smile politely, shake your head vigorously, and rush on by. There are plenty of restaurants that serve only vegetarian food and there are even some that will ask you if you mind if the pineapple spoon has touched the octopus meat, and if you mind, they will get a new spoon or even a "kosher" tin of pineapple for you. 

This happened as I was standing in line for a deep fried bake potato at the night market. I know, it's one of the unhealthiest vegetarian things you can buy, and for that reason I usually stay away from it. But once every few months I'll venture back and give it another try.

So the guy who was preparing the food behind his little "Prince Cheese Potato" stand (it's a portable metal food stand in the night market) asked me which kind of vegetarian I was, and I didn't understand the two options so I asked what he meant and that's when he asked if it bothered me if the spoons touched meat. When I hesitated, he brought out a tin of "clean" pineapple and one for the corn. I thought that was very nice. 

Well, I guess that's it for the inside scoop on small Taiwanese eateries. (get it? inside ... or should I say, "insides"...)    -_-

Until next time,

-R