Dashoushao Japanese BBQ

大手燒

No. 18, Wufu 3rd Rd, Qianjin Dist
高雄市前金區五福三路18號
(07)331-1521

Monday-Sunday 
5:00pm-2:00am

English friendly: yes
vegetarian friendly: no
average cost: 300-400NTD

I have had the good fortune(?) to eat at two separate Japanese BBQ places within the past three days, and now I get to tell you about them! Spoiler alert: the other one was better.

Dashoushao has the sort of location and interior design of which roaming hordes of frivolous Taiwanese food-bloggers love to fill whole blog posts, every detail photographed from a million different angles... It's cool, guys. They're going for a vintage Japanese feeling: low wooden tables and stools arranged in the open air, a wooden cart serving a selection of freshly stewed items, a refrigerator full of old-timey Japanese drinks, etc. etc. A very nice atmosphere, and you're going to pay for it.

When you're done with your meal, you just have to walk a few steps around the southeast corner of Central Park (this place is right on the edge of it) to get to the Brickyard "beer garden," famous rendezvous point of the legions of foreign English teachers and exchange students you somehow never see in the daylight.

This place also has a nice selection of beer and sake, however, for those prefer to get drunk sitting down instead of standing up.

The menu is divided into two main parts: 燒烤, or BBQ, and 關東煮, which I just learned translates into Japanese oden, which itself apparently translates into "[stuff] stewed in a light, soy-flavoured dashi broth." The waiter informed us upon sitting down that the BBQ takes 20+ minutes, and encouraged us to order some oden to stave off our hunger. The oden took like 10 minutes, and the BBQ more like 30 (all this after having to wait 20+ minutes just to get seats), so keep in mind: this place can get BUSY. Of course it doesn't help that we went at 7:00pm on a Saturday.

The oden is ordered directly from the adorable wooden cart mentioned earlier. Whether floating around in the cartsoup or delivered to one's table sliced into bite-sized pieces and accompanied by wasabi, all the oden options are of an eerily similar color, texture, and taste. Part of that is the horrendous orange lighting (also responsible for these horrendous pictures), but still. What we have above is two scallops (yummy!), some radish thing (radishy), a mushroom (a mushroom), and three other unidentifiable objects of different shapes that may as well have been carved from the same block of brothtaste. I think we got a tofu thing as well. I don't even remember.

The BBQ was a step up, but not a huge step. Here we have pork wrapped around mochi and sprinkled with ground peanuts. Sorry for the orange.

I would have thought the mochi + ground peanut combination could NEVER go wrong, but it certainly didn't go right... I am almost impressed that such a combination of dessert and meat managed to be neither sweet NOR salty. If I had to describe the flavor I guess I would say "chewy", except chewy isn't a flavor you guys.

This guy, though! Chicken wings, stuffed with 明太子, or mentaiko, or "the marinated roe of pollock, and cod [yummy!!!]"--who'd have thought? Foods-stuffed-in-other-foods innovations are one of my favorite things ever, and this time around it worked quite well. The chicken was tender and stuffed to bursting, the mentaiko all gritty and visceral and nom-nom-nom. Yeah.

Our meal concluded with some sort of meat (I think pork, I forget) covered in tons of cheese, which was whatever.

All this for two people qualifies as a light dinner, and we didn't even order drinks, but it still came out to like a million NTD. Even with the cool atmosphere and lack of bugs (how do they do it!), I dunno if it was worth it. The location is convenient though, and if you have a pack of friends that wants to split the bill + beers and wile away the nighttime hours beneath giant trees and aggressively orange lights, I could see it being a pretty fun time.

OVERALL RATING: 3/5

Lahore Exotic Cuisine

拉合爾異國美食

No. 86, Linquan St, Lingya Dist
高雄市苓雅區林泉街86號
(07)726-6803

Tuesday-Sunday 
11:00am-2:00pm
4:30pm-9:00pm

facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Lahore.tw

English friendly: yes
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 100-150NTD

I think I have a crush on this restaurant, everyone. Each time I think back about it I get happy butterflies in my stomach. I am just so, so glad that it exists.

Lahore "Exotic Cuisine" is what happens when a Mexican food stall and an Indian restaurant in Kaohsiung, Taiwan decide to combine forces to create something wonderful. It feels like there are so many stories behind this place, part of the reason it tickles me so. It's owners are (at least) two exotically ambiguously ethnic men and probably their Taiwanese wives. The guy at the front greeted us in fluent Chinese, which will be sure to amuse and delight all Taiwanese members of your dinner party. I was also amused and delighted.

Once again their menu is gigantic, so come prepared to conquer your crippling indecision or you'll never get to eat. On the left you have a selection of curries (paired with either rice or naan), on the right a selection of burritos, and in the center an intriguing and sometimes frightening selection of exotic drinks. 

You can order your curry/burrito on its own or as part of a set meal, in which case it comes with Indian milk tea and this slightly sweet fruit and yogurt dish. The milk tea was not overly sweet or thick, like most Taiwanese bubble milk tea, so it actually seemed a little watered down to me... Heh. But it was still good, and the yogurt made for a pleasant little dessert.

I chose the "Turkish yogurt drink (salty)", even though I was scared of it. It served its purpose quite well, in that it was INTERESTING, and even good, at least for the first few sips. It sort of tasted like salty, watered-down, sour butter, if that makes any sense. You should try it if you haven't had anything of the sort before, because you probably won't find it anywhere else. Just make sure to bring a few friends along to share the experience i.e. help you finish it.

The brilliance behind this restaurant, why it just works, is that the naan for the curry and the tortillas for the burritos are actually the same thing: a magical, soft+chewy bread substance prepared fresh by the owner outside in front of the restaurant. I would say it leans more towards a homemade Mexican flour tortilla than less-dense Indian naan, but it's just perfect paired with curry as well.

We ordered the spicy (actually not that spicy) chicken curry pictured above. Definitely not your standard Taiwanese curry. I'm not exactly sure what makes it so different--maybe it's not as sweet, or more heavily-spiced--but it tastes authentic, and oh-so-very good. 

I ended up choosing the beef and double cheese burrito, instead of the intriguing "fruit, potato, and cheese" burrito my heart really wanted. My good decision making skills may have won out this time, but I'll be back! My curiosity must needs be satisfied.

Though there were no beans inside (?), this burrito was still very satisfying. The double cheese did not stand out as much as I thought it would, and closer inspection revealed it to be that fake orange American cheese sold in prepackaged slices in Carrefour, but whatever I don't care!!! The tortilla was sooooo good, and the mixture of rice, cheese, vegetables, and beef just right. Plus its oily juices ran all over the place with every bite. Aah.

This restaurant is just what Kaohsiung needs: a taste of the exotic to break up the endless cycle of noodles, hot pot, rice, noodles, hot pot... And ONLY Kaohsiung could have it. It may not be as authentic as actual restaurants in India or Mexico, or maybe even as delicious, but that's not the point--it is its own creation, completely unique and utterly charming. 

For such a special experience, I am very happy to give away Kaohsiung Gastronaut Handbook's very first INFINITE RECOMMENDATION.

OVERALL RATING: 5/5

Drunk Cheap Japanese Fast Food

醉便宜日式快餐

No. 25, Yanji St, Jiuru 1st Rd
高雄市三民區九如一路延吉街25號
(07)386-6261

Monday-Sunday 
11:00am-2:00pm
5:00pm-9:00pm

English friendly: no
vegetarian friendly: no
average cost: 100-150NTD

"Drunk" and "most" have the same pronunciation in Chinese, so this restaurant's name is pretty cutesy. Don't get your hopes up though--it isn't very cheap, not relatively speaking, and I am almost positive you will not come away drunk.

I'm not one to waste a lot of space/pictures on the interior design of a place, or other non-food-related things, but so you know this restaurant is a lot nicer than the places I usually hang out (har har har). It's all decked out in Japanese style, with a wooden sushi counter and standing formation of young pretty waitresses in cute little uniforms. A good place for a date! Though be aware it can get pretty crowded.

You can order sushi of all varieties to-go at the sushi counter, or sit down for a more substantial set meal. Your choices are basically meat of some sort on top of stewed pork rice (which automatically comes with black tea, soup, and some greens) as well as whatever extra raw fish, cooked vegetable, etc. you'd like to order on the side. Because this is "fast food" in Asia, it comes to your table marginally faster than regular food at about twice the price. The most expensive things down there at the bottom are the salads, because they are salads.

Worth it??? Check out their seafood salad, a beautifully arranged bouquet of seafood (and mashed taro) just bursting with color! They also have a supposedly famous fish roe salad which sounds really neat, but I only found out about it after so will have to wait until next time...!

A massive salmon roe hand roll, which I did not have the pleasure of ingesting. 

So here we have a set meal, delivered on a huge cafeteria tray like a real fast food restaurant. This is the chicken drumstick option, and if the perspective weren't so whacked you would notice that the drumstick is TOTALLY GINORMOUS, as big as your FACE. I don't want to know what sort of mutant monster chicken that came from. My friend who ordered it said she thought the chicken was too salty, which--seeing as she is Taiwanese--is good news for you, you salty foreign devil!

Here is the stewed pork rice that comes at the base of every meal. It is good on its own, but not amazing. I sort of wished the rice were a bit fluffier. 

I personally selected the 虎掌飯 or "tiger paw rice" set meal option that this restaurant is famous for, which means my meat topping was the bloody severed paw of a wild Bengal tiger. Just kidding, it was this. Pig foot! You guys have started to eat pig foot by now, right?

I hope so, because it is in general seriously delicious, and this time around definitely-not-messing-around seriously, SERIOUSLY delicious. Smooth and chewy and fatty... if there were bones it would be falling off them. I guess it already fell off them. When paired with rice, it is just... perfect. It will make you so happy.

There is also a bountiful cache of bamboo hiding in the soup, to console you when you must face the crushing absence of pig foot because you ate it all in the first two minutes.

We all ordered 蒸蛋 ("steamed egg") on the side, and it came looking like this. Because I'd completely forgotten what we'd ordered, I initially thought it was tofu pudding, or some sort of custard. Even after I remembered, I was still sort of disarmed by it--it looks like it should taste sweet, but instead it's all salty and eggy and stuff... An exercise in mental disconnect.

There's all sorts of pinkish seafood hiding inside, including a random clam still in its shell (not pictured). I am still not sure how to feel about the whole thing. I would suggest ordering it if you are curious, looking to experience something new, or really REALLY into the taste of slippery egg whites.

Here we have my other friend's beef set meal. The beef was good, but it was still just beef. If you're coming here for the first time, I would not give up an opportunity to try the tiger paw rice.

I'd also like to note that the red tea that comes with each meal is REALLY good. It's been prepared in the traditional way, which means it has a complex, chocolately flavor instead of whatever tea-flavored sugar water flavor you get from the junk sold in 7-11.

I'm not sure how "Japanese" Drunk Cheap Japanese Fast Food is, as their set meal options are all variations on Taiwanese stewed pork rice, but I don't care. This place is special. It's not a chain restaurant, despite the "fast food" label, and it is good, despite the "fast food" label. Definitely stop by and give it a try.

OVERALL RATING: 4/5

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

ALIEN Vietnamese Restaurant

阿蓮河粉

No. 105, Ziqiang 3rd Rd, Lingya Dist
高雄市苓雅區自強三路105號
(07)333-7403

Monday-Sunday 
11:00am-12:30am

website: http://www.alian.com.tw

English friendly: ...yes!?!
vegetarian friendly: no
average cost: 70-100NTD

Don't worry, this Vietnamese operated restaurant in Ziqiang Night Market takes its name from the unfortunate Romanization of the 阿蓮 district in rural Kaohsiung. From what I can tell, the owners are not actually aliens. And if they are, well. They are using their alien technology to make really good food.

As the Chinese name of this place indicates, they specialize in Vietnamese 河粉, or rice noodles. You can get their food night market style on-the-go, or step inside to enjoy plentiful seating, air conditioning, and television! In case your dinner conversation is insufficiently sparkling.

Their menu is ENORMS--too big, indeed, to fit in this picture--with all sorts of 河粉, other noodles, soups, and a selection of specialty Vietnamese side dishes. If you choose 河粉, like you should, you can pick between flat, clear "tapioca" noodles (made from mung bean) or rounder, whiter rice noodles, and you can get them within soup or without. As a bonus, the English translations on the menu offer you an engaging source of pre-dinner entertainment.

The "total beef" tapioca noodles (not the "total surface of bovine"--that will have to wait until next time) without soup still came with a little cup of soup on the side, which was thoughtful of them. If you choose to pour it on top of the noodles as suggested, you get the perfect combination of fried noodles and soup noodles, with a bountiful bouquet of toppings. It turns out that "total beef" includes cow stomach (that's that weird white thing up the in the lefthand corner, if you didn't know) as well as other mysterious selections from the cow's innermost chambers. A delight!

The noodles were good! No wider than your standard linguini noodle (sorry I am a noodle snob with unrealistic expectations), and not necessarily handmade, but still. They were good.

I chose the hot and sour seafood rice noodles, which only came in soup... Because. Hot and sour soup is a soup.

After seeing the two types of noodles in front of me I regretted not picking the tapioca option: when I think of 河粉 I think of wide, flat, greasy dirty oily noodles (mmmmm...), and these guys didn't exactly do the trick. Still, the soup was tasty and the toppings were bountiful!

This place also offers a selection of exotic Vietnamese beers, which is really fun. 

The star of the entire meal, however, was this Vietnamese shrimp and pork pancake. Those of us who have spent some time eating food in Taiwan may be familiar with the famous 月亮蝦餅 or moonlight shrimp pancake, alternatively touted as either a Thai or Vietnamese delicacy though I do believe it is entirely the product of Taiwanese ingenuity. The 月亮蝦餅 is basically a shrimp ball in pancake form... this guy is completely different. The shrimp + pork + bean sprout filling comes wrapped in a thin, oily pancake; they aren't one body, as it were, until you combine them yourself.

By the way, if you can't tell from the picture this thing is GINORMOUS. Definitely bigger than my face, possibly bigger than two people's faces.

As the somewhat brusque server instructed us, you are supposed to cut off a section of pancake (making sure that the filling doesn't spill out), wrap it all up in a lettuce leaf and add a leaf of basil for good measure. The shrimp in the filling are still whole and not completely de-shelled, but somehow that worked out just fine. I don't exactly remember how. I don't know, I was distracted by how DELICIOUS it was.

I'm serious guys, I probably drop the word 'delicious' a lot but this dish was really Above and Beyond. The pancake was chewy but crispy, the filling was more than generous, and the basil leaf with the oil from the pancake gave the whole thing a slight pesto bent that hit me right in the heart.

I recommend going to this restaurant for the shrimp and pork pancake alone, but you don't have to: a gigantic menu worth of delicious authentic Vietnamese food awaits your discovery.

OVERALL REVIEW: 4/5 

Yuanxiang Beef Noodles

原鄉牛肉拉麵

No. 272-1, Senlin 1st Rd, Xinxing Dist
高雄市新興區森林一路272-1號
(07)235-7121

Tuesday-Sunday 
10:00am-8:30pm

English friendly: no
vegetarian friendly: ish
average cost: 70-100NTD

I've never completely understood how something as basic as beef noodles (read: beef, on top of noodles) could be considered a traditional Taiwanese dish, but it's near the top of almost every list of Taiwanese cuisine I've read so I'm not one to argue. It's sort of hard to define Taiwanese cuisine in the first place, which is probably why they keep making lists.

The first thing you'll notice about this place is that it is PACKED, even at noon on a Monday. That must be a good sign! But it was kind of a pain to wait for a place to sit and then get continually jostled by people reaching over for the hot oil. (Like hot sauce, but an oil... funny I never realized that doesn't exactly translate into English.)

They offer all sorts of animal parts--regular beef, cow ???, cow tendon, pig foot, mustard leaf and shredded pork--served on top of noodles in soup (拉麵, ramen) or noodles in sauce (拌面, in which you "拌" the noodles and sauce together by massaging the whole thing vigorously with your chopsticks). They also have wontons, soybean paste noodles (炸醬拌面, which I am pretty sure are a Beijing specialty...), and sesame paste noodles (麻醬拌面, your Taiwanese "traditional flavor" sauce of choice).

The beef noodles (in soup) came with beef in ball form (beefballs?) rather than slice form; what that means is up to you. The soup had a smoky 紅燒 flavor, and the toppings were fairly generous.

As were those of the mustard leaf and shredded pork noodles in sauce, a convenient choice for those among us who don't eat beef. (Common in Taiwan among descendants of farming families! Our discovery of Taiwanese culture through food continues.~)

I personally chose the sesame paste noodles, and I regret nothing.

If you only mix it a little bit, it looks kind of sketchy...

...But the end result is really good! Aaaah. 

These. Noodles. Were. Delicious. I definitely recommend sesame paste noodles of any kind for those of us missing peanut butter (it's basically sesame butter), but more than the sauce the noodles themselves were seriously quality. Thick and soft and chewy in all the right ways: that handmade, definitely-not-dehydrated-then-rehydrated feeling. UGH. I wish I could eat them all over again.

Another fun thing about this place is the selection of intriguing and sometimes horrifying side dishes up at the front counter. We decided on pickled cabbage and pig's ear, because. Well. Because.

The pickled cabbage was actually (SHOCKINGLY) quite special. It tasted almost exactly like that jar of homemade sauerkraut I made that one time in college--three ingredients: cabbage, salt, and LOVE, i.e. a week sitting on my shelf--so I'm pretty sure it has been made by hand as well. It has a really overpowering sauerkrauty flavor, and if you're into that it is totally delicious. 

The pig's ear was more there for shock value than anything else (wait until I tell my mom!) but it was pretty good too. I mean, it tasted mostly like fat and cartilage. Hard to mess up.

You should definitely take the crowdedness of this restaurant into account before going. Also a panhandler come around to our table multiple times during the meal and tried to sell us gum, then stood there staring silently when we said no... It may have been just that one time, but still. It was sort of uncomfortable. And probably because I'm white.

OH WELL. The noodles are worth it.

OVERALL RATING: 4/5

Lu Family Stinky Tofu King

廬記臭豆腐王

No. 253, Zhonghua 3rd Rd, Sanmin Dist
高雄市三民區中華三路253號
(07)281-9808

Monday-Sunday 
11:00am-2:00pm
5:00pm-1:00am

website: http://lugicdf.cdmcjoe.com.tw/

English friendly: no
vegetarian friendly: YES
average cost: 70-100NTD

If you're a connoisseur of stinky tofu, like me, you'll be thrilled to learn that this most definitely famous Hong Kong-style stinky tofu restaurant is within walking distance of your house. That is assuming you live in southwestern Kaohsiung, like me. 

You'll know when you've reached this place from smell alone. Now, because I am a freak I do actually enjoy the smell of stinky tofu (the stinkier the better!) but for me the stinky tofu king's palace takes it a step beyond "sharp cheese" veering dangerously into "gas station bathroom" territory. I was a little alarmed at first, but as always my nose slowly adjusted and soon enough I couldn't smell it at all.

The menu is a stinky tofu DREAM! They sell Hong Kong-style crispy-skinned stinky tofu, Japanese-style cold dressed stinky tofu, vegetarian steamed stinky tofu (so named because the Taiwanese Buddhist conception of vegetarianism also forbids "strong" flavors like salt, garlic, and MSG--the more you know!), fried egg yolk taro balls (???), as well as a large variety of hot pot and many side dishes including wood ear(!) and kimchi. I wanted to try EVERYTHING but unfortunately we were in sort of a rush.

I ended up getting the Hong Kong-style stinky tofu. A small gets you four cubes, a large six, served in the traditional way with a side of pickled cabbage. (You're supposed to put it on top... if you didn't... know that.) This stinky tofu is stinky tofu perfected. Crispy, salty, and incredibly juicy--a waterfall of stinky tofu soup exploding in your mouth with every bite. The pickled cabbage may also have been pickled cabbage perfected.... It tastes the same wherever I get it.

I also got fried ice cream, which I had never seen in Taiwan before and was REALLY excited to try. I was promised a crispy hot crust surrounding a smooth cool ball of ice cream...

...but the outside was just sort of oily and soggy and room-temperature, while the ice cream was a little too hard and a little too cold, and I'm still not sure what flavor it was supposed to be. So if you're looking for fried ice cream in Taiwan, be encouraged, it DOES exist, but you should probably look for it elsewhere. I hear it's good in Tainan?

As far as the stinky tofu goes, definitely look for it here. I think this is the perfect place to take the uninitiated and enthusiast alike. I, at least, will be back very soon to test out their other myriad stinky tofu styles!

OVERALL REVIEW: 4/5