Voting! Top5 Taiwan Nignt Market Food(Xiao-chi) of yours.

[Tempo Gain]

1. saweima
2. yusu geng
3. shaved ice
4. deep-fried chou doufu
5. tienbula but only to go with the yusu geng

[914]

1) Tianbula with soup at the end. Gotta have that soup.
2) Squid geng with mifen and sha cha jiang
3) Oyster omelette
4) Chou doufu with lots of garlic and pao cai. It's not the tofu I like so much as the garlic and soy sauce with the pickled vegetables
5) Shaved ice: green beans, grass jelly, tang yuan, condensed milk

[circleback]

I don't really like much of it except for the Hujiao bing at the entrance of Raohe Night Market (awesome!) and the Spicy sesame oil wontons at Shilin. Oyster omelette is a serious bizarre food concept to me - especially the sauce. I don't think you can find that color in nature. I do have to admit, though, the deep-fried stinky tofu with the pickled cabbage and spicy sauce on the side is not too bad if you get it at the right place. The "famous" sandwich at Miaokou in Keelung (Jilong) is a major disappointment, especially after waiting in a long line.

[BigJohn]

The Rao he hu jiao bing are great!

I also think their chuun juen is mighty fine.

And for a trifecta, the Pakstani kebab place makes the best street kebabs in Taipei.

For the Jilong NM, I really like their peanut ice cream.

[finley]

And for a trifecta, the Pakstani kebab place makes the best street kebabs in Taipei.

Oh yeah. That guy is the best - he's still there, eh? Haven't been there for a while.

I have a thing for 麻辣臭豆腐 (spicy stinky doufu).
And +1 to the shaved-ice recommendation (the ones at Shilin are pretty good).
Don't forget the many varieties of 包子 (baozi) ... again, the Shilin ones are hard to beat.

There is (was?) a fried-chicken vendor near the entrance of the Yonghe night market who did the best fried chicken. I bet even Sandman would like it.

I'm also not keen on those oyster thingies, but rou yuan (usually called something like "ba wan" in Taiwanese) have grown on me, even though they do look and feel like large balls of snot.

As for the 'greasy fried shit' comment - night market food in Taiwan is like street food in any country. If it's done badly, it's just greasy fried shit. If it's done well, it's gourmet cuisine. I'm thinking fish'n'chips back home - it can be garbage barely recognisable as food, or it can be really, really good stuff, depending on the ingredients and the chef.

[StevenCrook]

As for the 'greasy fried shit' comment - night market food in Taiwan is like street food in any country. If it's done badly, it's just greasy fried shit. If it's done well, it's gourmet cuisine. I'm thinking fish'n'chips back home - it can be garbage barely recognisable as food, or it can be really, really good stuff, depending on the ingredients and the chef.

Having grown up in the land of fish'n'chips, I agree 100%. There are plenty of fresh juices, ready-to-eat cut fruits and salad-filled seaweed wraps in night markets. They don't have to be unhealthy places to eat.

[conniebononie]

In no particular order:

1. Stinky Tofu
2. Turnip Cake
3. Shaved Ice
4. The little pastries with cream fillings
5. Spring rolls

Yum!

[John Yu]

1. Red Bean Cake
2. Pan-Fried Bun
3. Bubble Milk Tea
4. Yan Su Ji (chicken)
5. Yan Su (sweet potato fries)

If I was ordering my last meal, it would be these 5.

[asiababy]

According to the Taiwan govt, the latest "top 5 that foreigners like" are:

Guo bao (刮包). Also known as ‘Taiwanese burger’, this steamed bread and pork-belly combination has an almost cult-like following amongst some in the United States. I first tried it at a venerable snack shop in Tainan (sampled before my blogging days). It is surprisingly hard to find good specimens in Taipei, although there are some relatively good night market versions.
Rouyuan (肉圓). Also known as ‘Taiwanese meatballs’, these are very different from the Scandinavian kind. Covered with a semi-transparent pastry film, they are then usually topped with a thick, slightly sweet sauce. The result is more shapeless than the name ‘meat ball’ might suggest. But don’t let this description put you off; a good rouyuan is real comfort food. My favourite is a made by a shop that sells a fresh pork/prawn combination in Minquan Road, Tainan.
Shengjianbao (生煎包). Usually made of pork, these are steamed dumplings that have been half-panned fried. The buns combine fluffy, fresh white steamed bread with the fried flavour of their fried ‘bottom’. While technically a mainland import from Shanghai, they are now a popular snack food in northern Taiwan. They are fairly easy to find, but my favourite is a small outlet just outside Exit 3 of the Yongchun MRT station. My mother-in-law also makes a fairly mean version.
Zhuxuegao (豬血糕). Made from pigs blood and rice, this is a local delicacy and an acquired taste. Even at the press conference, TAITRA acknowledged that is was something that ‘may give foreigners a bit of a fright at first’. From time to time there is discussion about how best to translate the name into English. It is usually rendered literally as ‘pigs blood cake’, which unsurprisingly does not sound too appealing. I have tried it several times and don’t mind it. My favourite version is on-the-stick grilled pigs blood cake served at a shop in the historic area of Sanxia — here it is coated with a chilli/peanut powder mixture that makes it taste almost like satay.
O-ah-jien (蚵仔煎). This is a type of omelette that features locally grown oysters. It is one of the top things to snack on when visiting the Tainan historical suburb of Anping, which uses produce from the local oyster industry. But it is so famous that it has become a staple at most night markets throughout Taiwan. Taiwan oysters are generally small and sweet, and rarely eaten in the shell. The omelette is made from an egg/potato starch and tapioca flower combination with lettuce and oysters. There is an art to the frying, so it is worth waiting around to watch the omelette cook.

Quoted from my friend's blog, Taiwanxifu

http://taiwanxifu.com/2012/06/03/the-top-five-taiwanese-foods-foreigners-like/#more-2804

[*monkey*]

I used to live in an old alley not far from Zhongshan MRT Station. One of the old guys on the street was a stinky tofu supplier for street vendor/night market type places. He ran his business from his ground floor house, and the lane’s gutter and drains were stained milky white from the effluent from his “work”. He was forever lugging big blue plastic containers in and out of his place and there was a constant smell of rancid, rotting tofu in the air. In summer time, the stench was so bad that I’d detour around his place if I had time.

I used to leave my house pretty early in the morning – about the same time as he opened shop for the first customers to come and pick up tofu for their fried tofu stands. They’d swing by on motorcycles or occasionally small trucks. The first customer of the day was greeted by the cockroach exodus. Hundreds of huge, brown cockroaches would rush out into the lane as the old man opened the rusty metal door and some of the unfortunate insects would be flattened by passing scooters.

If there was no heavy rain, the squashed cockroaches would collect on the road as a crunchy insect “carpet.” It was one of the most disgusting sights you could imagine. The old man knew his little home tofu factory was completely infested with insects. The snack stand vendors obviously knew it too.

So the next time you order some stinky tofu – or anything else – at a night market, pause for a moment before shoveling that stuff into your face and try to picture the unsanitary 3rd-world conditions in which it was prepared. Yum!