Non-Stop Eating in Hualien, Taiwan

The First BBQ Stall (第一家烤肉串)

I love visiting night markets because in just a small market, I can find so many different types of delicious food, not to mention it’s often very cheap as well! There are 2 famous night markets in Hualien – one is Zi Qiang Night Market (自强夜市) and the other is Nan Bin Night Market (南濱夜市). We went to Zi Qiang Night Market for the both nights that we were in Hualien as we couldn’t finish trying all the food the first night! Luckily it was walking distance from our hostel so we didn’t have to take a taxi. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to visit the other night market… 🙁

If you like to eat BBQ food, this is probably the stall to go to in Zi Qiang Night Market – there are several similar stalls all around but this “The First BBQ Stall” was the most popular.

The ordering system is pretty simple, just choose whatever you want them hand it to the stall owner at the end of the queue and pay for them. They will mark your sticks and send them for grilling and proceed with giving you a queue number.

On weekends and holidays, the waiting time can be as long as 1 hour, so head to this stall and choose your food first, go and try other food and then return to collect your BBQ treats.

The stall offers a wide variety of food and we were so spoilt for choices. We chose some pretty safe options and also only a few so we have the stomach to try other things. Overall it’s pretty not bad (though they overcooked my chicken heart skewer), we liked the sauce pretty much but felt that the queue was a little too crazy!

The First BBQ Stall
(第一家烤肉串)

Location: Zi Qiang Night Market (自强夜市)
Food: Various types of BBQ food
Price: Range from NT$15 to NT$100 per piece
Waiting time: 20 minutes to 1 hour plus (on weekends and holidays)

While waiting for our food, we headed next door to eat some porridge. X and I were craving for some rice so we went to grab a bowl to share.

The portion was pretty generous given the price, with the taste pretty good.

Lee’s Cantonese Porridge
(李記廣東粥)

Location: Zi Qiang Night Market (自强夜市)
Food: Cantonese porridge – lots of different flavours to choose from
Price: Range from NT$60 to NT$100 per bowl
Waiting time: about 15 minutes

This spring roll is also crazily raved about while I was researching about the night market. There are two flavours to choose from and we chose the original pork flavour. We had to wait a while as the spring rolls are made on the spot (or rather, the orders are coming in so fast that the shifu (aka chef) couldn’t make them fast enough!

What I love about this spring roll is that the skin is thin and soft with an extremely generous portion of filling – definitely recommending it if you happen to be there!

Bei Gang Spring Roll
(北港春捲)

Location: Zi Qiang Night Market (自强夜市)
Food: Un-fried spring rolls – choose between pork or beef (flavourings: original, garlic, wasabi, chilli)
Price: NT$35 for pork; NT$40 for beef
Waiting time: about 15 minutes

Left: Popular fruit juice stall
Right: A stall selling one of Taiwan’s most popular snack – Da Chang Bao Xiao Chang (大腸包小腸)

After eating some snacks, all of us will want to grab a drink – and nothing beats an ice cold and refreshing fruit juice! There are also other drinks like bubble tea etc, but we decided to try the fruit juice as it was really popular – really long queue! Well, to be perfectly honest, I think fruit juice can’t go really wrong if good, quality fruits are used without addition of syrup or water. And the cup of fruit juice will make me felt less guilty about eating all the oily and fattening food… Or that’s what I self-convinced myself… 😉

“Too Wonderful for Words” Fruit Juice Shop
(“妙不可言”果汁店)

Location: Zi Qiang Night Market (自强夜市)
Food: Fruit juices
Price: NT$20++ per cup
Waiting time: 15 to 30 minutes

Da Chang Bao Xiao Chang (大腸包小腸) is a very popular Taiwanese snack, which literally means Big Sausage Wrap Samll Sausage – the big sausage is actually rice sausage while the small sausage is actually the popular Taiwanese sausage.

We bought one to share (because it was so huge!) and to be honest, I’m not very fond of the combination. I love the Taiwanese sausage, but not so much of the rice sausage (as it’s pretty bland). But definitely worth a try when you are in Taiwan!

An’s Creative Sausage and Exquisite Oden
(安記創意香腸‧精緻關東煮)

Location: Zi Qiang Night Market (自强夜市)
Food: Big Sausage Wrap Small Sausage (大腸包小腸); Oden (關東煮)
Price: NT$55 for the sausage
Waiting time: 15 to 30 minutes

This was the first time I tried the Exploding Chicken Roll – and I love it so much that whenever I go to other night markets I’ll try to find one to eat. It is actually pieces of chicken meat wrapped in chicken skin (that’s what I read online). The roll is grilled until the skin is extremely crispy. You can then choose a flavour to sprinkle on your roll – it can be salt & pepper, lemon salt, wasabi etc.

Be careful when you bite it in as the juices inside will “explode” and burn you if you are not careful (speaking from experience haha). The roll is juicy, moist and very flavorful – one of my favorites!

Exploding Chicken Roll
(爆浆鸡肉卷)

Location: Zi Qiang Night Market (自强夜市)
Food: Chicken rolls (with 7 types of seasoning to choose from)
Price: NT$35 for 1; NT$100 for 3
Waiting time: 15 to 30 minutes

The last snack that we tried in the night market is the Guan Cai Ban. The name is actually pretty morbid as Guan Cai Ban means “coffin” in mandarin. What the stall sells is actually thick toasts filled with a filling – giving it the appearance of a coffin (but of course, no bodies are filled in it haha). The filling can be grilled chicken, beef, pork, shrimps, and each meat comes in various flavours. It was really interesting and I will recommend eating it as soon as possible to prevent the crispy toast from turning soggy.

Chiang’s Family Coffin Boards
(蔣記花蓮式棺材板)

Location: Zi Qiang Night Market (自强夜市)
Food: Coffin sandwiches
Price: NT$45++ for each sandwich
Waiting time: 15 to 30 minutes

Zi Qiang Night Market
(自強夜市)

Location: Zìqiáng Road, Hualien City, Hualien County, Taiwan 970

Getting there: Walk (if you’re staying nearby) or take a taxi as there’s not much public transport available in Hualien

Besides gorging ourselves silly in the night market, we also continued the eating craze in the day – and this time it’s in Hualien’s city centre.

The first stall that we visited was highly recommended for their specialty, a huge bowl of shaved ice called “Wu Ba Tapioca Pearls with Shaved Ice, Caramel and Condensed Milk” (五霸粉圓焦糖牛奶冰). The shaved ice is flavoured with caramel syrup and condensed milk, and underneath the sweet, sweet ice, there are various types of delicious treats – soybean pudding (豆花), tapioca pearls (粉圓), red beans, green beans etc. I personally find it pretty interesting though X wasn’t very fond of it. The shop also offer hot desserts if I didn’t remember wrongly.

Wuba’s Tapioca Pearls Shop
(五霸焦糖包心粉圓專賣店)

Location: No. 165, Bó’ài Street
(花蓮市博愛街165號)
Opening hours: 1130 hours to 2300 hours
Food: Speciality – Wu Ba Tapioca Pearls with Ice, Caramel and Condensed Milk (they offer other types of desserts as well)
Price: NT$45 per bowl

X loves to eat oyster omelette and I decided to include this popular oyster omelette stall in our food hunt.

Taiwanese oyster omelette is pretty different Singapore’s oyster omelette. Singapore versions does not use vegetables and most stalls will fry the omelette until the edges are really crispy. They are also serves plain as it is without sauce. Chilli sauce will be served on the side.

The Taiwanese version is definitely not the crispy version – it is softer, with lots of vegetables (which I really liked), and accompanied with a special sweet sauce. I love the sauce as it makes the omelette not too dry. However, X likes the Singaporean crispy version, though he is fine with Taiwanese-style oyster omelette as well.

This stall opens only at 5pm and when we reached there a little after 5, the stall was already filling up! Many locals also rode (on their scooters) to the stall to buy the oyster omelette, showing how popular this stall is. I can understand why it is so popular as the uncle was really generous – lots or sauce, lots of vegetables (and they used kang kong instead of napa cabbage, yum!) and lots of oysters. I had eaten oyster omelette in other night markets and they are not as generous as this uncle. Definitely recommending this stall!

Haipu Oyster Omelette
(海埔蚵仔煎)

Location: No. 86, Zìyóu St, Hualien City
(花蓮市自由街86號)
Opening hours: 1700 hours till sold out
Food: Oyster omelette (蚵仔煎); oyster soup; clam soup
Price: Oyster omelette (NT$45); oyster soup (NT$60); clam soup (NT$40)

And next to the oyster omelette stall is another dessert stall – we ate a very simple and traditional dessert – Ai Yu Bing. Ai Yu is a type of jelly made from the gel from the seeds of a variety of fig and commonly found in Taiwan. It is often added into drinks and desserts. In our dessert, it was served topped with ice and sugar syrup – a really simple and refreshing treat.

Yang Zi Ying’s Dessert Stall
(杨子莹)

Location: Zìyóu St, Hualien City (花蓮市自由街)
Located just next to Haipu Oyster Omelette (海埔蚵仔煎)
Opening hours: Unknown
Food: Traditional desserts (糖水)
Price: NT$20++ per bowl

On the next day, after our dolphin sighting boat ride (sadly we didn’t see any dolphins at all), we went back to the city center in search for more yummy treats!

On Fuxing Street (復興路), there are 2 stalls selling the same snack – yup, only one snack – that everyone is willing to come early / queue to buy. The stalls open only at 1pm, but long before they open there are already crowds ready to buy the snack. We can all see the owners preparing the food behind the carts – very nonchalantly in fact, and they will really wait until 1pm before they start to take orders, not a minute earlier!

So what is this snack that they are selling?

It’s this!

It’s a spring onion pancake with an egg! I’ve talked about it in my previous Shilin post before, but what makes this unique is that the egg yolk is still soft and oozy – the whole egg is added into the hot oil (yes, unhealthy deep-fried egg) together with the pancake dough and deep-fried such that the egg sticks to the dough. It is then scooped out and brushed with a soy-sauce-concoction and chili sauce before serving

We bought one from each stall to try and we concluded that both stalls are equally good – and if not for the crazy queue, I would definitely order more to chomp on. Well it’s really unhealthy, considering its all deep-fried, but we can always indulge once in a while! 😉

Spring Onion Pancake Bomb
(老牌炸彈蔥油餅)

Location: No. 102, Fùxīng St, Hualien City
(花蓮市復興路102號)
Opening hours: 1310 hours till sold out
Food: Spring Onion Pancake (蔥油餅)
Price: NT$15 without egg; NT$20 with egg

Justice Street Buns (公正街包子)

This stall was recommended for their Xiao Long Bao – a Shanghai delicacy where minced pork is wrapped in a thin layer of dough and steamed till cook. The resulting bao has a very thin and fragile skin and once broken open, all the yummy pork juices will flow out – making it a treat that I can never stop at one!

When the Xiao Long Baos came, we at first thought they got our order wrong, but no it’s us who were wrong! The buns are actually like mini meat buns, and though the buns were juicy, flavourful and delicious, X and I both agreed that it would be better if it was the thin-skin version. Nevertheless, it was a really popular stall – many locals were queueing to buy the buns, probably because it’s really cheap and yummy!

The steamed dumplings came out nice, but nothing much to wow about.

Justice Street Buns
(公正街包子)

Location: No. 199-2, Zhōngshān Rd, Hualien City
(花蓮市中山路199-2號)
Opening hours: 24 hours
Food: Buns and dumplings; also sell some noodles and soups
Price: NT$5 per xiao long bao; NT$30 per basket of steamed dumplings; NT$3 per boiled dumpling

Tai Kee Wonton is also highly raved on the internet so we decided to go give it a try. In Chinese, the food is called Bian Shi, and we had actually no idea what it is until we saw it being served to us. Bian Shi is actually wonton, which is a type of Chinese dumpling. In the wrapper is a small mound of ground pork filling, and to be honest, the soup was pretty bland and so was the wonton – so this dish is only a so-so for us.

Tai Kee Wonton
(戴記扁食)

Location: No. 120, Zhōnghuá Rd, Hualien City
(花蓮市中華路120號)
Opening hours: 0700 hours to 0030 hours
Food: Wonton
Price: NT$60 for 10 dumplings

The last stall that we went to was a dessert stall – they serve both hot and cold desserts and one interesting thing is that you can mix and match the toppings to make your own unique shaved ice! The funny thing is we actually chose a really weird combination of food – barley seeds, tapioca pearls,
mangopassion fruit, yam pearls… haha. For the price I would say it’s pretty worth it because the serving is very generous and we had trouble finishing it!

Yi Xin Shaved Ice
(一心泡泡冰)

Location: No. 16, Zhōnghuá Rd, Hualien City
(花蓮縣花蓮市中華路16號)
Opening hours: 1000 hours to 0030 hours
Food: Shaved ice
Price: NT$30++ per bowl

---

And that’s all for Hualien! The next stop would be Taitung~! For the rest of the posts on Taiwan, see our Taiwan travel itinerary here!