Yong He Dou Jiang, Taoyuan

On our first night in Taiwan, we stayed in Holiday Inn Express, Taoyuan City.

Mum, bro and I shared a room. So, we got the triple room for three. The bed is super comfy! Almost didn’t want to get out of it when bro and I were watching TV while waiting for the rest to get ready.

The bathroom damn sexy lorh. See the shadow? That’s where the shower is. Plus, they have this 400ml “Lux” shower gel attached with the shower. So, you can lather yourself up with more shower gel. hakhakhak…

After we checked-in to our respective rooms, we went out for a stroll. Initially, we were just planning to cross the road and buy something from Family Mart (24 hours convenient store) which is just across the road from our hotel. When we saw a coffeeshop not far from it, we ended up having supper in that coffeeshop called “Yong He Dou Jiang”.

I forgotten to take a picha of the signboard but I managed to locate the shop from google map, and best of all, Google Map Taiwan has 3D satelite images!!!!!! How to not love Taiwan the IT advance country?

How come our Malaysian google map don’t have such 3d images geh?

Anyway, if you google for Yong He Dou Jiang, Taiwan, you will find lots of Yong He Dou Jiang in different districts in Taiwan. It’s such a common name that you only recognize the shop by its location.

Now, here’s the trouble we (Mum, Bro and I) Bananas (don’t know how to read Chinese characters) faced throughout the whole trip in Taiwan. Everything is in Chinese! We would be able to sample more Taiwanese delicacies if it’s not more the Bananaisme. T____T Fortunately, we went with relatives who reads Chinese unlike us cina sesat.

Anyway, as you can see from the menu, there are so much to choose from, if we had black hole in our tummy, we would have ordered them all. So, to keep things simple, we just order whatever we see.

These puffs and pastries are the Yong He Dou Jiang’s specialties. There were all freshly made on that particular day.

This special type of sandwich is super freshly made. We witnessed how it is done. Simply eye opening experience.

Plain Mantou

And of course, there’s also the “traditional” bun, plain mantou. Normally, eaten with hot soya milk or hot tea in the Chinese kung fu movies. *LOL*

The soya bean milk, the everyone’s favourite hot drink (not mine because I don’t take soya bean). According to them, it is very delicious like very fresh and not too sweet. I tried a sip and………almost fainted. Hot tea is good for me.

They also serve this bean bean soups:

This one smells like peanut butter in hot water. LOL.. Saw someone having it with the yew char kueh.

The yew char kueh is simply the best! It is very long and crispy. Super nice and tasted better than the ones we buy from the Kuching Festival. We had a lot of this.

Still undecided on what else to try, we peeked at what our Taiwanese neighbours wre having, and we kinda followed. So, we can get to taste like the locals. =x

These are the copycated menus:

The Xiao Long Bao is like steamed dumplings but in the shape of mini bao. Also, the taste is pretty similar to “Guo Tieh” (wok dumplings), just juicier. At every bite you take, the juice inside would flow out and it is extremely hot! On our first attempt (which was during dinner), most of us burnt our tongue while having this mini bao.

The hot steamy outer skin with hot sweet juicy and tender porkie inside. *licks lip*

Then, there’s this plate of noodles we saw our Taiwanese neighbour enjoying to the very bits! So, we reckoned it should be very sedaps and we ordered one.

The “egg bag” (egg white wrapping around the egg yolk like a bag) sitting on top of the noodles is superb. The yolk is not overcooked and still very jellyish waiting to be poked. I was so tempted to poke it and let it flow into the noodle, mix it and take a bite.

I’m not sure what exactly is the name of the noodle, so I call it the oriental spaghetti. Simply because the thickness and texture of the noodles is similar to spaghetti and the taste, well, Asianised bolognese without tomato paste and replacing minced beef with pork.

To me, I don’t quite like the oriental spaghetti. But for bro, he enjoyed it like our neighbour.

After our fulfilling supper, we headed over to Family Mart for some Taiwan Beer and Papaya Milk .

Slept late that night and had to woke up very early in the morning the next day at 6.30am! T____T A train to catch. Next on, our train ride.. chuuuu..chuuu…chuuuu…