We spent just over a week in Taiwan, and really loved it. People were so friendly and helpful. The cities had a lot going on, there was a lot of natural beauty, and the food was excellent! We spent a few days in Taipei, battling the intense heat and humidity, and were very impressed with the vegan scene. Best of all, there were lots of restaurants at which lots of small sharing plates were encouraged. We were thrilled to get to try lots of different dishes. Here are the Taiwanese restaurants we tried there – other eateries to follow next week.

Yang Shin

We went to Yang Shin on our first night in Taipei and loved it so much we went back for one more visit later in our trip. It was absolutely heaving on both visits, so I strongly recommend a reservation (you can book online easily). It’s vegetarian, and the menu clearly indicates with picture symbols which dishes contain milk, eggs, and honey (this system was quite common in Taiwan and Hong Kong, we found). There was a huge array of vegan dishes, and we seized the opportunity to try quite a lot of them! On our first visit, we ordered five dishes for two people, and felt like we could have gone for one more. The dishes were brought over when ready, not served all at once, which means you can never get a photo of the table straining under the weight of all the food, sadly. But at least you get everything while it’s piping hot!

We kicked things off on our first visit with the chopped mustard greens and tofu wrapped in bean curd sheet. They were a bit dry, and we would have liked some dipping sauce, but they had a good flavour and texture. I love bean curd, but it’s not something that is served much in Prague, so this leg of the trip was heaven for me.

The Beijing duck style king oyster mushroom was a pancake dish that we assembled ourselves at the table. The crispy bits made for some fun textures, but the flavours didn’t pack a punch unfortunately, so it was nice but not mind-blowing.

The kung pao deep fried stinky tofu was fantastic – really spicy and moreish. It was our first time trying stinky tofu, and definitely not the last (in fact, we ordered the same dish again on our second visit). If you’re a bit unsure about stinky tofu, this is a great gateway dish as the crispy coating and other flavours take the edge off a bit. I found that generally it smells terrible but tastes amazing. I’ve been desperately looking for stinky tofu recipes since getting back to Prague, but sadly it is not easy to make yourself. I’ll need to find an excuse to get back to Taiwan!

The Cantonese BBQ cha siu bao were a bit too sweet for me, but Dr HH enjoyed them. To be honest, I generally find this kind of dumpling a little too sweet, so this was probably poor choosing on my part.

The deep fried mushroom puff was amazing and we had it again on our second visit. It had an almost takoyaki style soft, gooey texture inside the crispy coating, with a lovely savoury, peppery taste and earthy mushrooms.

The stir fried taro cake in xo sauce was exceptional. We’ve not had much taro in our lives so it always seems like an exciting option. Here the taro had a great chewy texture and was really well complemented by the crunch of the rice cakes. The sauce was delicious too.

The stir fried Chinese yam and eggplant in oyster sauce was good. The yam was quite crunchy and surrounded by soft and slippery aubergine which made for a good contrast of textures. The sauce was flavoursome too.

The Yang Shin signature Shao Mai was okay. It tasted fine, but didn’t really have any particularly strong flavour. We were expecting it to be a bit fishier, but as always we are a bit scuppered by having stopped eating meat when we were so young that we haven’t had meaty versions of most dishes! We didn’t really know what these should taste like, we were just guessing.

We also had some stir fried flat noodles. The big, wide noodles were a hit, and the flavours and textures were fine, but it was a bit oily.

This was such a great spot. In particular, the stinky tofu and the mushroom puffs were absolutely perfect in both texture and taste. Everything else was good too, and we were tasting dishes we’d never seen on a menu before, which was really fun for us. I highly recommend this spot for vegans in Taipei.

XiangHe – Serenity

Serenity was a similar spot, with a varied menu and clearly labelled vegan options. It was much quieter than Yang Shin, but it was quite busy so you probably want to make a reservation just to be on the safe side. We got 4 small dishes to share and two bowls of rice and there was plenty of food for two hungry people.

Who could resist a dish called sautéed vegetarian pork intestines? The meat pieces were well seasoned and had a bit of a bouncy texture. The greens added a nice bit of crunchy texture, and the chillies weren’t too spicy. We had no idea if this was a close approximation of intestines, but it made for a tasty plate.

The mapo tofu stew was delicious, lots of slippery tofu with some of that Sichuan pepper tingle. The sauce didn’t taste quite as strongly of the doubanjiang chilli paste as others we’ve had and this also led it not being bright red like other versions too. As someone who makes a lot of mapo tofu these days, I am in awe of how they managed to serve it with so many of the silken tofu pieces intact. Mine fall apart the second I stir it or scoop up a ladle for our bowls!

The king oyster mushrooms in vegetarian oyster sauce were excellent. What’s not to love about meaty slabs of mushroom with great texture? The vegan oyster sauce was very flavoursome. The broccoli on the side was fine, but it wasn’t seasoned and was a bit wet – really not adding to the dish.

And of course, we couldn’t resist more stinky tofu! We tried the steamed stinky tofu stew. It was good to try this version without the additional flavours in the Yang Shin dish – we got to focus fully on the stinkiness of the tofu! I could have eaten another pot of this, honestly.

We were served a couple of little mochi at the end which I think we’re licorice flavour with a red bean paste inside them – perfectly enjoyable. We were also served free tea and refills throughout the meal.

The menu was I think not as extensive as at Yang Shin, but it was still full of novel and exciting dishes for us. The stuff of dreams!

Lai Xin SuShi

We kept seeing the word “SuShi” on Happy Cow, and realised that it translates to ‘vegetarian’ – so this is absolutely not a sushi restaurant! This was a cheap and cheerful vegan spot specialising in noodles and dumplings.

Dr HH got noodles with miso, spicy, and sesame sauces. The noodles were delicious, nice and wide. The sauces didn’t really pack enough of a punch for him, though. The chilli was strong, but the other flavours a bit too mild.

I got the braised meat noodles. I loved the noodles too, you could really taste the freshness. The meat pieces were tasty but there wasn’t much sauce and it felt a bit under seasoned.

We also got a plate of ten cabbage dumplings to share. The cabbage dumplings were the only fresh flavour they had made in the restaurant that day, the others were from frozen. The other fillings might have been more exciting, but we opted for the freshness. They were really tasty, the dumpling wrappers were the perfect thickness. They were generously filled and there was lots of flavour in them.

We got a side plate too. You can pick these up from the counter yourself and add them to your meal for 35NT$ (less than a pound). This was some nicely seasoned tofu slices that we both really enjoyed – there were a few different things to choose from.

The food here was not a total hit like the previous two spots I’ve reviewed, but it was much cheaper and still really fresh and fun.

Activities in Taipei

We saw a few cultural sights in Taipei, including the National Palace Museum. Unfortunately the big attraction in the museum, a jadeite cabbage, was not on display when we visited, but we saw lots of other great items and took lots of photos. Our only complaint about the museum was that it was quite poorly serviced by buses, so it was a bit too much effort to get there and back. Ultimately I’d still recommend it though.

We swung by the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall without really checking what it was – it turns out it’s a memorial to a dictator. Rather than sharing that with you, here’s one of the other highly photogenic and less problematic buildings from the same square.

Long Shan Temple was one of my highlights of Taipei. It was a real shift again from the religious sites we’d seen in Japan and Korea. The attention to detail was absolutely extraordinary, we just walked around with our mouths hanging open and our phones up trying to capture every single carving and colour. Really beautiful.

Less impressive to us was the Contemporary Museum of Art, which unfortunately was a bit too contemporary for our personal tastes. Most of the exhibits were video-based, which is just not my favourite medium, so it fell a little bit flat. It’s always nice to be somewhere with air conditioning though!