We Ate Someone Else’s Food in Taiwan

I’ve traveled to a handful of countries so far, and Taiwan—yes, a country—has to be my top pick to date. Easily the biggest reason for this is the food, especially its street food culture.

My wife and I were lucky enough to travel to this beautiful island country before the pandemic. We have nothing but good words to say about Taiwan, and we are eager to go back and explore and delve into the culture even more.

One of the many interesting food stories that we’ve had was on our second day, where we accidentally ate someone else’s food right in front of them. We were clueless as to what was happening, but so were they.

We arrived in Taiwan pretty late at night, so we just decided to have a quick snack from 7-Eleven (which was still bomb, btw) and hit the sack. In a way, this was our first actual meal in Taiwan. Breakfast in Taiwan is in a class of its own because even if it is inherently Chinese, they’ve incorporated ingredients and techniques unique to them. And I am definitely ready to indulge into all of that.

I looked up some famous local breakfast spots near our Airbnb, and I saw one of the famous spots called Yong He Soy milk. Long story, we could not find it. So we just walked around the area and found this small spot. It only had a few tables and chairs, but their food spoke volumes. They had this killer scallion pancake that’s best paired with a warm and silky soymilk. I’m almost certain all other breakfast spots have good food as well, but we decided to eat at the closest spot.

We went there at around 8:00 a.m., and it was already busy. They gave us a numbered ticket while we were waiting to be seated. We couldn’t really see any English words on the plastic menu, so we relied on the pictures of the food. After a few minutes, the lady in the cash register called our attention and pointed at an empty table. We took it as a sign that we could already occupy the seats. Of course, we ordered the sought-after scallion pancakes, xiao long bao, and breakfast sandwiches. I had it with warm milk while my wife went for the sugar cane juice.

Then, after a few minutes, another couple joined us in our table. We didn’t really mind, and just focused on our itinerary for the day. They also gave their orders.

We were really excited to explore the city since it’s our first time to be in Taiwan together. In the midst of our conversation, one of the staff placed the breakfast sandwich in the middle of our table. It had eggs, Chinese sausage, some sort of red sauce wrapped around with scallion pancakes in a burrito-like fashion. It looked so good and appetizing, but I wasn’t sure if it was ours. The couple that shared our table also looked at it, and was probably confused too. And then I thought that since we got to the table first, and we ordered ahead of them, that would mean that it was ours. So I grabbed it. Ate it, and shared a few bites with my wife. It was glorious.

As I was going in for the last bite, the lady in the cash register suddenly pointed at us. She approached our table and started talking to us in Cantonese. On the back of my mind, I thought we did something wrong. We asked what was going on, but she couldn’t understand us. We were in a pickle. Luckily, the couple knew how to speak Chinese (we learned right after that they were tourists from Hong kong) and helped us. It turns out, the order was actually for them. We quickly apologized, and we insisted that we would pay for the meal, but they politely declined. They were very chill and casual about it. This mishap became a cool ice breaker so that we could open up to another couple visiting Taiwan. This was definitely unexpected, but nevertheless, a very cool experience that I could share to you. Life is funny like that. You eat someone else’s food, expecting to get berated, but instead you get a good conversation out of it.

We didn’t get to get their names, but if you guys can see this, it’ll be cool to reconnect again. I hope you both enjoyed Taiwan as much as we did.