Nanfeng Pork Rice

南豐魯肉販

No. 138, Ziqiang 3rd Rd, Lingya Dist
高雄市苓雅區自強三路138號
(07)331-2289

Monday-Sunday 
10:00am-12:00am

English friendly: no
vegetarian friendly: no
average cost: 50-70NTD

Stop by Ziqiang Night Market on a random weekday evening and it might be close to empty... except for this place. In fact Nanfeng is famous enough among Taiwanese people that at least one friend of mine was able to identify their stewed pork rice from a picture alone.

...And here's why.

I forgot to get a picture of the actual stand/seating area (sorry guys!), but you can look here if you want extra help identifying it: The First Taiwanese Food Blog to Come Up on Google.

The menu is short but sweet. They are, understandably, most famous for their stewed pork rice (魯肉販), but their "lionhead" rice (獅子頭飯) was also highly recommended to me and comes free with lame puns about lion meat. Every. Single. Time... 

I'm including the Chinese names here because I would recommend doing your homework before going--the servers seem a little too swamped to guide us foreign folks through the menu, though of course I could be wrong.

We got two stewed pork balls (滷貢丸), two slices of "oily tofu" (油豆腐), and two bowls of soup as sides. The turnip soup was nothing special, but I guess no one really orders turnip soup hoping for something life-changing...

But the bitter melon pouch (苦瓜封) soup was really neat! Basically they hollow out a bitter melon like it's some tiny jack-o'-lantern, stuff in a bunch of raw pork, then stew the whole thing until it's cooked. The result looks *super* cute, as you can see here. Unfortunately, it still tastes like bitter melon... Eurgh. 

The lionhead rice was pretty good! The cabbage jazz was all sour and crunchy, the pork oil was nice and flavorful, and the meatballs tasted sort of like meatloaf, if you're into that. Nice and juicy, and the rice was really well cooked. Of course if I had to choose between the two, I would definitely go for the--

--stewed pork rice! I'm putting another picture up because... just look at that. That slab of pork is... pornographic. It tastes exactly as delicious/guilt-licious as it looks.

I'm sure lots of you know traditional Taiwanese stewed pork rice is usually rice topped with some cabbage and a small pile of stewed, minced pork + pork oil. This pork slab business might be Kaohsiung style, or just this restaurant, I'm not exactly sure. Either way, it's REALLY good and you should try it.

I don't normally get the little side thingies at restaurants but in this case I'm glad we did, because when I'd devoured all the meat and still had half a bowl of rice on my hands--voilà! Extra toppings, perfect. The tofu was was super juicy and the pork ball was nice and firm, with the smooth consistency of one of those fish ball things, if anyone knows what I'm talking about. A+!

Anyway because this place is so Famous &etc., and because it serves such delicious authentic traditional food in such generous portions with such characteristic methods of preparation, I'd say it's a must for any Kaohsiung Gastronaut.

OVERALL RATING: 4/5