Kaohsiung Shaved Noodles

港都刀削麵

No. 106, Zhengxin St, Zuoying Dist
高雄市左營區正心街106號
(07)556-5312

Monday-Saturday 
hours unspecified

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

Did you all know that 港都, or "port capital", is another name for Kaohsiung? Also 打狗, or "hit the dog", but that is another story altogether... This is a story about Kaohsiung shaved noodles.

Take one look at this place and you can tell it's the type of dirt cheap, dirt authentic, dirt-y hole-in-the-wall restaurant that Taiwanese people love. I hear it gets really packed during regular lunch hours, so we went at 11:30am to escape the crowds.

Aaah, just look at all that grime. The only things they sell here are handmade knife shaved noodles (if you don't know what that is you will in a second) and soup, and as you may have noticed all of it is SUPER cheap.

Well, okay, they also have a refrigerator offering the classic spread mysterious side dishes, though without as many horrifying choices as I've come to expect. We went with the most horrifying choice available to us, "phoenix claws" AKA chicken feet.

Woohoo, just look at me now Mom! I have, actually, gradually gotten over my distaste for chicken feet (what a sentence) and these were the best chicken feet I've had so far. They came deboned (thank god) and steeped in vinegar and ginger for a smooth, subtly refreshing flavor, with some crunchy cartilage bits for added interest.

The porkchop shaved noodles looked like this! A "small" is actually pretty small--I would suggest getting a large instead, to satisfy your gluttonous foreigner appetite.

The soup on this guy was pretty okay, again *smoky* without being salty. If you like salty food like me... well, you're probably in the wrong country. I'm thinking about investing in a flask.

I ordered the 大滷 (or "big stewed") shaved noodles which came in 羹 (that is, "thickened soup reminiscent of hot and sour soup, also sperm"--very popular in southern Taiwan!) complete with spit bubbles. It was basically like hot and sour soup, without the hot or sour.

When made properly, knife shaved noodles look like this. Because they've been shaved off by hand from a magical block of noodlestuff, the width and thickness vary considerably, which to noodle aficionados such as myself is the noodle equivalent of crack.

These noodles, though, were mushy where they should have been chewy (or "Q", in the Taiwanese parlance); I think they'd been overcooked. Which I could have overlooked, but they were also SUPER bland. Bland is an essential part of the Taiwanese palate... but I don't have to like it! To make things worse, the toppings--a random assortment of mushrooms, veggies, and I think a few slivers of meat--were bland too. Really, I ate the whole bowl but I would be damned if I could tell you how it tasted. It didn't really taste... at all. Haaah.

Also, a cockroach and a smaller insect of unspecified allegiance crawled onto our table before the meal. And the whole restaurant smelled faintly of urine. SO. 

All in all, I'm still glad I went to this place! Now nobody can accuse me of always ranking Taiwanese food above Western food.

OVERALL RATING: 1/5