Taiwanese Food Overview: No Dish Is Purely Taiwanese; Every Dish Is Taiwan at Its Most Taiwanese

In 1949, at No. 325 Zhongshan Road beside the Chiayi Fountain Roundabout, Lin Tian-shou sliced a piece of turkey, laid it over white rice, and poured braising sauce on top¹.

That turkey had been left from birds raised by U.S. forces stationed in Chiayi. The rice beneath it was "Penglai rice," which Iso Eikichi had tested at Zhuzihu on Yangmingshan in 1925². The braising sauce poured over it was based on soy sauce brought by Minnan people from the Qing period. One spoonful of rice carried Japanese-era grain, postwar American military meat, and Qing-era Minnan sauce: three hundred years on one stage.

More than seventy years later, the Agriculture and Food Agency held a vote for "Taiwan's Ten Signature Rice Dishes," and this bowl from Fountain Turkey Rice took first place³. No one sees the words "mixed-race" in this bowl of rice, but every spoonful is exactly that.

30-second overview: Taiwanese food is not a cuisine; it is the process by which an island cooks outside foods into its own way. In 1925, Iso Eikichi tested Penglai rice at Zhuzihu; in 1949, 1.21 million immigrants from China's provinces brought the eight major Chinese cuisines; U.S. aid flour left soy milk and youtiao under Yonghe Bridge; in 1986, Chun Shui Tang added tapioca pearls to milk tea. Today, the 2025 Michelin Guide includes 419 restaurants in Taiwan, 144 of them street-food venues⁴. No dish is purely Taiwanese; every dish is Taiwan at its most Taiwanese.

Night at Raohe Street Tourist Night Market, the most representative "night" scene of Taiwanese food. Photo: KClinla, 2023, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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Mountains, Sea, and Family Migration: The Three Base Layers of Indigenous, Minnan, and Hakka Food

To see the foundation of Taiwanese food, one has to look back to an era when the island had no passports.

The lowest layer is Indigenous. Taiwan's sixteen officially recognized Indigenous peoples each have their own ways of eating, but they share one principle: "from where one is." Where the mountains are, where the sea is, what season it is, what foods are available. The Amis call themselves a "people who eat grass"; they have more than two hundred edible wild vegetables. Their "ten-heart greens" use the tender inner stems of seven plants: yellow rattan, screw pine, betel nut, silvergrass, shell ginger, sugarcane, and coconut⁵. The Paiwan dish "cinavu" wraps millet and pork in shell ginger leaves and creeping cucumber leaves; it is a ritual food. They also developed "stone-slab barbecue," using the even heat of slate slabs to grill wild boar⁶. The Pinuyumayan drink binaleng in summer, a sour-spicy soup made by fermenting wild cherry tomatoes with bamboo shoots⁷. The Atayal spice maqaw, or mountain pepper, looks like black peppercorns when dried and combines the aromas of black pepper, ginger, and lemon. In 2018, the Michelin Guide listed it among "five Taiwanese Indigenous ingredients you should know"⁸.

Cinavu is a ritual food of the Paiwan, Rukai, and Pinuyumayan peoples, sealing memories of mountain and sea inside shell ginger leaves. Photo: Sin-siōng, 2024, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

One layer up are the Minnan and Hakka people who crossed the sea from Fujian and Guangdong during the Qing period.

Minnan people brought coastal ways of eating: oysters raised in the tidal flats of the west coast became oyster omelets and oyster vermicelli. They also brought soy sauce, which would later reappear on every bowl of lu rou fan, rouzao fan, braised pork rice, turkey rice, and the braised eggs in bento boxes⁹. The term "lu rou fan" formally appears only after the war: Qing and Japanese-era Minnan dictionaries have only "braised meat" (pork braised in soy sauce), not "braised meat rice." Researchers infer that the dish emerged in the poverty of the early postwar period. People who could not afford a whole piece of pork asked butchers for meat scraps, fat, and pork skin, chopped them, braised them in soy sauce, and poured the pot over white rice¹⁰. As it traveled north and south, it also changed names: in northern Taiwan it is called lu rou fan; in the south, rouzao fan. A whole slab of pork belly with white rice is called kong rou fan in the north; the Ministry of Education's standard characters render it as "炕肉飯"¹¹.

Lu rou fan: outside bento shops, schools, and offices, the greatest common denominator of Taiwanese eating. Photo: udono, 2007, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Hakka people lived in hills and mountains, and on their migrations they depended on salt to preserve food. Their food is summarized as "fatty, salty, fragrant": "fatty" resists hunger, "salty" goes with rice, and "fragrant" stimulates appetite¹². Among the traditional "four braises and four stir-fries," "Hakka stir-fry" was originally called "stir-fried meat": shredded pork belly, dried squid, celery, scallions, and chili stir-fried quickly over high heat. The word "Hakka" in the name was given by Minnan people or other groups outside the Hakka community¹³. "Stir-fried pork intestine with shredded ginger" uses a large amount of pork intestine; pork offal was an important nutrient source for early Hakka people¹⁴. "Lei cha," also known as "three-raw soup" (raw tea, raw ginger, raw rice), was introduced to Taiwan after World War II by Hakka immigrants from Hepo in Jiexi, Guangdong. In the early Republican period, when resources were scarce, Hakka people even used lei cha as a substitute staple for infants short of breast milk¹⁵.

📝 Curator's Note

Chiao Tung, the food writer who turned Taiwanese flavor into a trilogy, once said: "There is no Sichuan-flavored beef noodle soup in Sichuan, no Mongolian barbecue in Mongolia, no Fuzhou noodles in Fuzhou... This is homeland memory assembled, reconstructed, and misplaced.¹⁶" He was originally speaking about the homesickness of post-1949 immigrants from China's provinces. But seen in reverse, this is the meta-rule at the foundation of Taiwanese food: every group brings its own memories; the island's ingredients and climate recalibrate them once; eventually they become "Taiwanese flavor." The pickled mustard greens Hakka people brought are not quite the same as Guangdong pickled mustard greens; the soy sauce Minnan people brought is not quite the same as Fujian soy sauce either. Geography is not scenery. Geography turns back and changes food.

The fifty years of Japanese rule (1895-1945) added a layer of refinement above this foundation. In 1865, the Scottish merchant John Dodd had already introduced oolong tea seedlings from Anxi, Fujian, to Tamsui, Sanxia, and Daxi. In 1869, under the brand "Formosa Oolong," he shipped 213,000 catties of tea to New York and achieved great success. Tea was Taiwan's first food with an international brand¹⁷. During the Japanese period, Japanese researchers improved local rice. In 1925, Iso Eikichi and Suenaga Hitoshi chose Zhuzihu on Yangmingshan for its cool climate and bred rice there. In 1926, Governor-General Izawa Takio formally named the "Nakamura strain" "Penglai rice" at the Great Japan Rice Association meeting at the Taipei Railway Hotel¹⁸. The white rice in your bowl today is almost all descended from that lineage. The Japanese also brought sukiyaki, miso, katsuobushi, sake, and yoshoku restaurants, including pork cutlets, omelet rice, and curry rice that flowed out from Ginza's Rengatei. These would later all become part of "old Taiwanese flavor"¹⁹.

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The 1.21 Million People of 1949 Later Made Sichuan Spicy Doubanjiang with Taiwanese Soybeans

In 1949, the Nationalist government relocated to Taiwan, bringing large numbers of soldiers and civilians from across China's provinces. In a 2015 interview, Chiao Tung gave the figure as "1.21 million immigrants from China's provinces poured in, bringing the eight major cuisines of Chinese cooking"²⁰.

These 1.21 million people moved into military dependents' villages, their spatulas facing the ingredients of an unfamiliar island. Their memories held Sichuan's numbing spice, Hunan's heat, Shandong noodles, Jiangsu-Zhejiang sweetness, and Guangdong clarity, but the island had no broad beans, the core of Sichuan spicy doubanjiang; no hard wheat of the north; no Shanghai cured pork.

So they rewrote those dishes.

The most famous example is "Sichuan-style beef noodle soup." It did not actually come from Sichuan. The food writer Wang Hao-yi says, "Taiwan's first bowl of Sichuan-style beef noodle soup was in Kaohsiung." After the government moved to Taiwan, Sichuan veterans stationed in Gangshan, Kaohsiung, prepared spicy doubanjiang in the taste of home and added it to simmering beef soup, creating the classic flavor of Sichuan-style beef noodle soup. Most family members had followed from Sichuan, and Sichuan cooks used Taiwanese soybeans to replace the broad beans in Pixian doubanjiang²¹. By the mid-1950s, red-braised beef noodle soup had spread to northern Taiwan, and more than a dozen "Sichuan-style" red-braised beef noodle shops gathered on Taoyuan Street in Taipei. The so-called "Sichuan style" actually originated in Taiwan; people from Sichuan cannot find this bowl of noodles in Chengdu.

Beef noodle soup: the marriage certificate between military dependents' village Sichuan spicy doubanjiang and Taiwanese noodle culture. Photo: Jpatokal, 2007, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The communities of post-1949 mainland immigrants also gave Taiwan xiaolongbao, shaobing with youtiao, and northern mantou. In 1958, Shanxi immigrant Yang Bing-yi opened "Din Tai Fung Oil Retail" on Linyi Street by Dongmen in Taipei; at the time it still only sold oil²². In 1972, Tang Yong-chang, owner of the Shanghai restaurant Fuxing Garden, suggested subleasing part of the shopfront to sell xiaolongbao and mille-layer cakes. In 1974, the business formally transformed into a restaurant. In 1995, Yang Bing-yi retired and his son Yang Ji-hua took over, standardizing xiaolongbao production and developing the "eighteen-fold" method. Yang Ji-hua himself once said: "One time a reporter asked me exactly how many folds there were in the closure of a xiaolongbao. I answered eighteen. From then on, that number became the public secret of our xiaolongbao.²³" In 1996, Din Tai Fung opened its first overseas branch at Takashimaya Shinjuku in Tokyo, sparking a xiaolongbao craze in Japan. Today it has more than 160 overseas locations, and CNN has listed it as the "world's second-best chain restaurant"²⁴.

Din Tai Fung: turning a Jiangsu-Zhejiang snack into a Michelin brand, then exporting Taiwan from Xinyi Road to sixteen countries. Photo: Banzai Hiroaki, 2009, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Chiao Tung also said something that fixes this layer of narrative firmly in place: "They became the 'hometown dishes' spoken of by those mainlanders at the time, but what they ate was not necessarily the taste of their original hometowns. Yet fermented by longing for home, they still became the nostalgic flavor of collective memory.²⁵"

This is a precise description of the post-1949 mainlander context. It does not apply to Indigenous food or to the Minnan and Hakka foundation; those are earlier narratives. But for the layer of military dependents' village cuisine, "homesickness" is the core driving force, and "misplacement" is the inevitable result.

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The Consequence of U.S. Aid Flour: The Soy Milk and Shaobing Revolution Under Yonghe Bridge

Beginning in the 1950s, another outside force changed the way Taiwan ate: U.S. aid.

The essence of U.S. aid was structural dietary transformation, far beyond simple food assistance. The government at the time imported wheat at low prices, had flour mills grind it into flour, then exchanged it for edible rice to export and earn foreign exchange²⁶. Miao Yu-xiu, who came from Shandong, suggested to the Minister of Economic Affairs that aid be shifted to wheat. He later established Lien Hwa Flour Mill and earned the title "father of flour." The Food Bureau even recruited students from the Home Economics Department of National Taiwan Normal University to hold "noodle cooking demonstrations," showing more than forty ways to cook noodles. This was a state-level campaign to "replace rice with wheat"²⁷.

U.S. aid also brought large quantities of soybeans. Soybeans became the main ingredient for soy milk, tofu, and soy sauce. This was the chemical starting point of Taiwanese breakfast.

In 1955, under the Yonghe end of Zhongzheng Bridge in New Taipei's Yonghe, several soy milk stalls formed a "Soy Milk King" cluster. At the time, Zhongzheng Bridge was undergoing repeated repairs; workers ate soy milk for breakfast before starting work and shared it after finishing, helping soy milk shops become popular²⁸. Later, "Yonghe soy milk" became a generic term. Almost any twenty-four-hour Chinese breakfast shop has used this signboard.

💡 Did you know?

Global Views Monthly described the rise of noodle foods in postwar Taiwan very clearly: "That noodle foods became popular in Taiwan after the war was related not only to the arrival of people from Shandong and other northern Chinese provinces where noodles were a staple, but also inseparable from the large quantities of wheat distributed to Taiwan through postwar U.S. aid.²⁹" In other words, two forces sit on the Taiwanese breakfast table: the homesickness of military dependents' village veterans, plus American flour. The combination of soy milk, youtiao, and shaobing is the product of two variables: "mainlander" and "U.S. aid."

By the 1980s, "Western-style chain breakfast shops" such as Mei & Mei, Jülin, Rui Lin Mei & Mei, and Morning McCity began to expand. Lin Kun-yen opened a shop on Bade Road in Taipei selling Western-style breakfasts that were cheap and novel: egg crepes, sandwiches, hamburgers, and milk tea³⁰. Today Taiwan has roughly 18,000 breakfast shops, the highest density in the world; Western-style chain breakfast shops have surpassed 10,000 locations, with annual output of about NT$200 billion, more than convenience stores³¹. Morning McCity has about 1,400 branches across Taiwan; Rui Lin Mei & Mei reached 2,800 franchises in 2004; Jülin Mei & Mei exceeded 1,100 franchises in 1992³².

Convenience stores also joined this race. 7-Eleven began formally selling tea eggs in 1987, and the price of NT$10 per egg remained unchanged for decades³³. In 1997, the same year President Chain Store Corporation went public, Hsu Chung-jen added "onigiri" and "oden" items. Together with tea eggs, these later became the "three sacred foods" of Taiwan's convenience stores³⁴.

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One Accident at Chun Shui Tang in 1986: After Tapioca Pearls Fell into Milk Tea

If one moment had to be chosen to represent "Taiwan cooking outside foods into its own," it would be an afternoon in 1986 at Chun Shui Tang on Siwei Street in Taichung.

There are two versions of the story. Chun Shui Tang maintains that in 1986, at Liu Han-chieh's tea shop, manager Lin Hsiu-hui added tapioca pearls to milk tea and accidentally invented bubble tea. Hanlin Tea Room maintains that after Tu Tsong-he opened his shop in Tainan in 1986, he saw tapioca pearls sold at the Yamuliao market and tried adding them to milk tea; because the cooked pearls were "pure white and translucent" like pearls, he named the drink "pearl milk tea"³⁵. The two businesses fought a ten-year lawsuit over "who invented it first." The court ultimately found that because the matter dated back many years and bubble tea was a new type of beverage rather than a patented product, any shop could make it. The court did not confirm either side as the true inventor³⁶.

Bubble tea: invented at Taichung's Chun Shui Tang in 1986, and by the 2020s Taiwan's strongest soft-power export. Photo: Hippietrail, 2019, CC0 (Public Domain) via Wikimedia Commons.

This dispute lasted so long that people forgot the central fact: the two core elements of this drink are both not "native to Taiwan." Tea comes from Minnan, Indian, and British colonial tea-drinking traditions; the starch in tapioca pearls is cassava starch, whose place of origin is Brazil. But after these two things met in Taichung in 1986, they produced a drink no one in the world had seen before.

CNN and National Geographic have both listed this drink as "one of Taiwan's most representative cultural exports"³⁷. National Bubble Tea Day is April 30, launched in 2018 by the U.S. brand Kung Fu Tea, which was founded in New York in 2010 by three entrepreneurs from Taiwan³⁸. Today, people in Taiwan drink 1.02 billion cups of hand-shaken tea drinks each year, 44 cups per person, with revenue of NT$50 billion; the global bubble tea industry is projected to reach US$4.3 billion, about NT$129 billion, by 2027³⁹. Taiwanese tea shops span more than 40 countries and 300 cities, with 50 Lan, Gong cha, Chun Shui Tang, CoCo, Milksha, and others opening one by one in New York, London, Johannesburg, Sydney, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, and Bangkok⁴⁰.

✦ "This was the first time Taiwan conquered the world through 'invention' rather than 'copying.'"

Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls hand-shaken drinks a "tool of diplomacy"⁴¹. Compared with semiconductors and chips, bubble tea may be the first doorway through which more people come to know Taiwan.

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Night Markets and Bando: Two Ways Taiwanese People Gather to Eat

Taiwanese people have two typical scenes for eating together: one is the night market, the other is bando, roadside banquet catering.

Night markets are the freest popular space. Taiwan has more than 300 night markets. In a 2025 vote, Shilin, Fengjia, Garden, Raohe, Liuhe, Ningxia, Yizhong Street, Ruifeng, Shida, and Luodong made the top-ten popularity list⁴². The histories of night markets mostly connect to the Japanese period: Ningxia Night Market originated at the Japanese-era traffic circle, and after that circle was redeveloped, vendors moved to Ningxia Road; most have been in business for more than fifty years. Liuhe Night Market originated in the early 1950s and once won the title of "Taiwan's most charming night market." Raohe Night Market was Taiwan's second tourist night market after Huaxi Street. The site of Taipei's Nanjichang Night Market was converted from a Japanese Army training ground⁴³.

The three representative night market foods are beef noodle soup, oyster omelet, and salty crispy chicken. Oyster omelet has multiple origin stories: introduced by Minnan fishermen, invented to stave off hunger during Zheng Zhilong's naval battle food shortage, or used as military rations when Zheng Chenggong recovered Taiwan. It flourished in Taiwan because this island is surrounded by the sea and oyster farming is well developed⁴⁴. Salty crispy chicken has two origin camps: one says it began in 1975 at Taipei Ximending's "Taiwan's First Salty Crispy Chicken," though that name in fact belonged to a seasoning powder wholesaler; the other says that in 1979, "Youai Salty Crispy Chicken" at the intersection of Ximen Road and Youai Street in Tainan began cutting large pieces of American-style fried chicken into smaller chunks, skewering and frying them, sprinkling them with pepper salt, and adding the distinctive aroma of Thai basil fried together with the chicken⁴⁵. Ba-wan, the Taiwanese meatball, was first invented by Fan Wan-ju of Beidou, Changhua, as disaster relief food during the 1898 Wuxu flood: he soaked sweet potatoes, kneaded them into a mass, added cauliflower, and cooked the mixture for disaster victims⁴⁶. The second generation later improved it by deep-frying it and adding bamboo shoots to make it savory; the third generation used sweet potato starch and indica rice batter for the skin and wrapped red meat inside, establishing the final form of Beidou ba-wan. North of Changhua, deep-frying is dominant; in the south, steaming in bamboo steamers is dominant. This is the origin of "steamed in the south, fried in the north"⁴⁷.

Oyster omelet: one of the three representative night market foods, along with beef noodle soup and salty crispy chicken. Every stall's sweet-spicy sauce is the vendor's code. Photo: Morgan Calliope, 2015, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

On another side of the night market are the Indigenous stalls at Keelung's Miaokou Night Market, where wild boar and millet wine have walked from mountain communities into the urban night. This, too, is a feature of Taiwan's night markets: one may think they are spaces of "ordinary Han people," but looked at closely, Indigenous, Hakka, and new immigrant stalls are all inside.

An Indigenous stall at Miaokou Night Market: wild boar and millet wine entering the urban night from the community. Photo: 玄史生, 2012, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The other extreme from the night market is bando.

Bando is Taiwan's outdoor catering culture. It is held for weddings, festive celebrations, temple festivals, funerals, birthdays, and longevity banquets. National-treasure-level master banquet chef Lin Ming-tsan, nicknamed "Master A-tsan," began following his father Lin Tian-sheng to cater bando in Nangang, Taipei, at age 12: twenty-eight days of banquets a month, three to four events a day. He formally took over at age 40 and now has more than forty years of experience and has catered at least 20,000 bando events. He was once invited to prepare a birthday banquet for the king of Thailand, and he also served as a consultant for the 2013 film Zone Pro Site⁴⁸. His father Lin Tian-sheng was called the "founding master" and "living dictionary of Taiwanese bando." He was Taiwan's only master banquet chef to have prepared a "Son of Heaven banquet," a feast for worshipping the Jade Emperor that requires eight hours.

The historical curve of bando is clear. Master A-tsan said: "Bando was at its peak in Republic year 65 (1976). In the early Republic year 80s (1991), the bando custom began to decline and shrink"⁴⁹. Low birth rates, hotels, and wedding banquet halls have each taken one quarter of the market; bando now remains at only one quarter of its former scale. The 2020 pandemic was even worse. Master A-tsan told The Reporter: "The number of outdoor catering banquet tables has shrunk by at least 90 percent from Lunar New Year until now. The 921 earthquake hurt outdoor catering a little; SARS hurt more than half of it; this year's pandemic may turn bando into a declining industry. We are not only worried about this year; we are even more worried that people will make a habit of not hiring bando.⁵⁰"

He also explained why old-style dishes are disappearing: "First, they are labor-intensive; second, tastes change generation by generation. Older-generation chefs trained from the fundamentals, from slaughtering pigs and chickens to making dessert puddings and cakes themselves. Now there are outsourcing vendors and frozen foods, and chef apprentices cannot learn much.⁵¹"

A bando table usually serves "twelve dishes." The drama title Song of the Twelve Bowls comes from the old Taiwanese recitation song The New Song of the Twelve Bowls, in which a woman carefully arranges a "bando banquet" to entertain the person she loves; every dish has an allusion to human feeling, righteousness, ritual, and propriety. Master A-tsan said: "In Chinese astronomy and calendar systems, the number 12 is used, and 12 also represents an auspicious number"⁵².

📝 Curator's Note

Master A-tsan actually left behind an even more central definition: "Modern people's imagination of bando is that it is an occasion where everyone gathers to eat. But the meaning of bando should be a gathering for life rituals or seasonal observances.⁵³" This sentence can be applied to the central tension of all Taiwanese food. Dishes can be borrowed, mixed, or newly present only since 1949, but "why we eat together" has always belonged to this island. Weddings and funerals, celebrations, gods' birthdays, ancestors' death anniversaries, election rallies, temple festivals, harvests, and the start of work: Taiwanese people gather around tables according to their own ritual logic. Food here is only the medium.

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Michelin Arrived in 2018: Of 419 Restaurants, 144 Are Street Stalls

On March 14, 2018, the Michelin Guide entered Taiwan, marking Taiwanese restaurants' formal entry into an international evaluation system.

By the 2025 eighth edition, Michelin included 419 restaurants: 3 three-star restaurants, 7 two-star restaurants, 43 one-star restaurants, 144 Bib Gourmand selections, and 7 Green Star restaurants for sustainability⁵⁴.

All three three-star restaurants have retained the distinction for multiple consecutive years: Le Palais (Taipei, Cantonese), Taïrroir (Taipei, contemporary Taiwanese), and JL Studio (Taichung, Singaporean/contemporary). Le Palais has held three stars for eight consecutive years since the first Taiwan guide in 2018, Taiwan's longest-running three-star record. But there is a turn: Le Palais's former executive chef, Chan Wai-keung, born in Macau in 1970, left Le Palais in 2024 and went to Kaohsiung to build a new Cantonese restaurant, Gen⁵⁵. A three-star restaurant for eight straight years, with its central figure gone elsewhere: this is precisely the fragility of top-end dining.

RAW, by André Chiang, has closed. Chiang announced that RAW would close on December 31, 2024, a tenth-anniversary farewell⁵⁶. After the spotlight of 2018, Taiwan's fine dining scene has passed through another decade of decisions of its own.

But the Michelin Guide's most noteworthy category is actually Bib Gourmand, the award that recognizes "good food at friendly prices." Tainan alone had 31 Bib Gourmand restaurants in 2024, many of them famous local snack shops⁵⁷. This means Michelin has recognized Taiwan's popular taste: a roadside bowl of NT$70 beef soup can stand on equal footing with a Michelin-starred kitchen. CNN directly called Tainan "Taiwan's food capital"⁵⁸.

📊 Michelin Taiwan 2025 Data

Indicator	2024	2025
Total selections	343	419
Three stars	3	3
Two stars	5	7
One star	41	43
Bib Gourmand	126	144
Green Star (sustainability)	6	7

Another dimension of fine dining is tea. Taiwan's high-mountain tea has moved from teahouses into the tea lists of Michelin restaurants. Alishan, Lishan, Shanlinxi, and Taimali high-mountain teas grow on mist-wreathed slopes above 1,000 meters in elevation, from Tsou communities to the rims of cups in top restaurants. The act of John Dodd introducing oolong tea seedlings from Fujian to Tamsui in 1865 is still shaping Taiwan's map of taste 160 years later.

Alishan high-mountain tea: from Tsou communities to Michelin-starred restaurant tea lists, grown in mist above 1,000 meters. Photo: Hughon-zxl, 2011, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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The Next Mouthful: New Immigrants, Sustainability, Delivery, and the World's Third-Highest Vegan/Vegetarian Population

If Indigenous, Minnan-Hakka, post-1949 mainlander, and U.S. aid foods are the four base layers of Taiwanese flavor, then the fifth layer is now underway.

The population of new immigrants exceeded 1.87 million in 2025, and Southeast Asian cuisines have formed a new food landscape in Taiwan. Ministry of Education statistics from 2022 show 18,755 Vietnamese, 16,426 Indonesian, 12,510 Malaysian, and 2,831 Thai international students in Taiwan⁵⁹. The fall of South Vietnam in 1975 and the severing of diplomatic relations between Taiwan and Thailand indirectly prompted Taipei's first Southeast Asian street, in Gongguan, to appear in the late 1970s. At the time, in the lanes off Roosevelt Road Section 4, there was a private kitchen run by a couple who had served as drivers at the Vietnamese embassy and made pho⁶⁰. Today, Zhongshan North Road Section 3 in Taipei has "Little Manila"; Zhonghe in New Taipei has "Huaxin Street Burmese Street"; Zhongli in Taoyuan has the Southeast Asian restaurant area on Zhongyang West Road; and there are the surroundings of Taichung's First Square. These are invisible world maps.

Vegan and vegetarian food is another number that surprises the world. About 14 percent of Taiwan's population, roughly 3.2 million people, is vegetarian, the third-highest proportion in the world, after India and Mexico. Taiwan has nearly 5,000 vegetarian restaurants, with more than 600 each in Taipei and New Taipei alone and more than 500 in Kaohsiung⁶¹. In 2017, CNN named Taiwan one of the world's ten most vegetarian-friendly cities⁶².

Sustainable dining is also sprouting. In 2025, Michelin awarded seven Green Stars in Taiwan: Tu Pang, Thomas Chien, Mountain and Sea House, EMBERS, Yangming Spring, Little Tree Food, and Hosu. Their common points are attention to ethics and environmental protection, cooperation with sustainable suppliers and producers, waste reduction, and avoidance of plastics and other non-recyclable materials⁶³. On April 19, 2022, the Legislative Yuan passed the Food and Agricultural Education Act on third reading: government agencies, state-run enterprises, administrative juridical persons, and schools should give priority to locally produced agricultural products⁶⁴. This is the state binding "what to eat" to "the land" in law.

Delivery platforms are the least visible transformation. foodpanda Taiwan's 2025 GMV was about US$1.8 billion, with a 79.6 percent market share; Uber Eats had 60.8 percent. At the end of December 2024, Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission blocked Uber Eats' acquisition of foodpanda's Taiwan business, which would have produced a combined market share above 90 percent. Later, Grab acquired foodpanda Taiwan for US$600 million, nearly 40 percent less than Uber's offer⁶⁵. A phone screen has reorganized the act of "eating." The moment one opens an app, Taiwanese people's relationship to food is already different from that of Master A-tsan's generation.

⚠️ Controversial View: Taiwanese food narratives rarely discuss laborers. Taiwan's distant-water fishing industry holds a position of global dominance, but exploitation of fishery workers is an important source of profit. Most workers on board are foreign migrant workers hired "overseas," and Taiwan's government has consistently refused to let them be covered by the Labor Standards Act⁶⁶. Every time we eat a milkfish, a mahi-mahi, or a slice of tuna, there is an invisible supply chain behind it. Food is cultural soft power, but supply chains are real political questions.

Nor should we forget how three food safety incidents in the 2010s pierced Taiwanese society's trust in food:

2011 Plasticizer Incident — The Department of Health's Food and Drug Administration detected abnormal signals while testing probiotic powder, exposing that Yu Shen Chemical had illegally added the plasticizer DEHP to clouding agents. Yu Shen had been adding plasticizers for more than fifteen years, selling a total of 102 metric tons of clouding agents and flavoring sauces to seventeen downstream businesses. The Supreme Court sentenced Yu Shen's responsible persons to fifteen and twelve years in prison⁶⁷.

2013 Tatung Chang Chi Adulterated Oil Incident — The incident broke on October 16, 2013. Tatung Chang Chi mixed low-cost sunflower oil and cottonseed oil into olive oil and added copper chlorophyllin for color. On July 24, 2014, company chairman Kao Chen-li was sentenced to twelve years in prison⁶⁸.

2014 Gutter Oil (Chang Guann) Incident — Chang Guann produced "Chuan Tung Fragrant Lard Oil" with 33 percent inferior oil and 67 percent lard, a 1:2 ratio. The scandal affected major companies including Chi Mei Foods, Hunya Foods, 85°C, Ve Wong, Wei Chuan, and Black Bridge. On July 24, 2015, the Pingtung District Court sentenced chairman Yeh Wen-hsiang and Tai Chi-chuan to twenty years each and fines of NT$50 million⁶⁹.

After these three incidents, Taiwanese demand for "local," "friendly small farmers," and "food and agricultural education" rose. Sustainable dining, the Food and Agricultural Education Act, and Michelin Green Stars are all compensatory collective memories after plasticizers, gutter oil, and copper chlorophyllin. They come from a Taiwanese society repairing itself in the opposite direction after trust in food collapsed.

Pineapple cake: the modern footnote to the four words "Taiwan souvenir," from Chia Te and SunnyHills to 7-Eleven. Photo: Karl Thomas Moore, 2016, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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Back to the Fountain: Turkey Rice in Its Eightieth Year

Return to No. 325 Zhongshan Road beside the Chiayi Fountain Roundabout in 1949. Lin Tian-shou sliced turkey left from U.S. military rearing, laid it over Penglai rice, and poured on Minnan braising sauce. One mouthful takes in four hundred years: Japanese-era rice varieties, postwar U.S. military meat, and Qing-era Minnan sauce.

More than seventy years later, in the Agriculture and Food Agency's "Taiwan's Ten Signature Rice Dishes" vote, this bowl took first place. No one sees the words "mixed-race" in this bowl of rice, but every spoonful is exactly that.

Master A-tsan said: "Modern people's imagination of bando is that it is an occasion where everyone gathers to eat. But the meaning of bando should be a gathering for life rituals or seasonal observances."

Perhaps the secret of Taiwanese flavor is the same: the dishes are borrowed, but "why we eat together" has always belonged to this island.

The next time you sit on a plastic chair at a night market and bite into an oyster omelet; or stand in front of the office microwave waiting for your bento to ding; or sit at a round bando table listening to the auntie next to you talk about whom the neighbor's daughter married. That mouthful is evidence of four hundred years of an island cooking outside foods into its own way.

No dish is purely Taiwanese. Every dish is Taiwan at its most Taiwanese.

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Further Reading

Island Foundations:

• Taiwanese Indigenous Food Culture — Each of the sixteen peoples has its own way of eating, from stone-slab barbecue to binaleng sour-spicy soup
• Hakka Food Culture — "Fatty, salty, fragrant" and the preservation wisdom of migration routes

Migrant Mixtures:

• Taiwanese Military Dependents' Village Cuisine — The eight major cuisines brought by those 1.21 million people in 1949, recalibrated by the island
• Beef Noodle Soup — Spicy doubanjiang from Sichuan veterans in Gangshan, Kaohsiung, plus Taiwanese soybeans

Everyday Popular Food:

• Lu Rou Fan — Meat scraps and fat from early postwar poverty, poured into a national rice dish
• Night Market Culture — Taiwan's 300 night markets and the taste maps of Shilin, Ningxia, Raohe, Liuhe, and Fengjia
• Taiwanese Snacks — The complete collection of lane-and-alley flavors, from oyster omelet to salty crispy chicken

Liquid Revolution:

• Bubble Tea — One afternoon at Chun Shui Tang in 1986 changed the world's beverage map
• Taiwanese Hand-Shaken Drink Culture — 50 Lan, Gong cha, and CoCo reaching more than 40 countries
• Tea Culture — From John Dodd's oolong tea in 1865 to today's Alishan high-mountain tea

Ritual and Refinement:

• Taiwanese Bando Culture — Lin Tian-sheng and Lin Ming-tsan, father and son, and the human feeling, righteousness, and ritual of twelve dishes
• Taiwanese Michelin and Fine Dining — The trajectory from Michelin's 2018 entry to 419 restaurants in 2025
• Taiwanese Breakfast Culture — From soy milk under Yonghe Bridge to twenty-four-hour chain breakfast shops

Diverse Extensions:

• Taiwanese New Immigrant Food Fusion — The Southeast Asian map brought by 1.87 million new immigrants
• Taiwanese Vegetarian Culture — The world's third-highest vegetarian population share
• Taiwan, Kingdom of Fruits — An island fruit map from high-mountain peaches to tropical sugar apples
• Food Hub — Overall food category index

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Image Sources

This article uses 9 public-domain / CC-licensed images, all cached in public/article-images/food/ to avoid hotlinking source servers:

• Raohe Street Tourist Night Market 173356 — Photo: KClinla, 2023-04-26, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Cinavu Paiwan beiyeh — Photo: Sin-siōng, 2024-01-02, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Lurou fan by udono — Photo: udono (Shuets Udono), 2007-10-26, CC BY 2.0
• Beef noodle soup Shilin — Photo: (WT-shared) Jpatokal, 2007-08-22, CC BY-SA 4.0 (multi-license)
• Xiaolongbao Din Tai Fung Taipei — Photo: Banzai Hiroaki, 2009-03-21, CC BY 2.0
• Bubble tea six languages — Photo: Hippietrail, 2019-09-16, CC0 (Public Domain)
• Oyster omelette Shilin Night Market — Photo: Morgan Calliope, 2015-04-29, CC BY 2.0
• Aborigine roast pork millet wine Miaokou 2012 — Photo: 玄史生, 2012-02-05, CC BY-SA 3.0
• Alishan YUYUPAS tea garden — Photo: Hughon-zxl, 2011-01-21, CC BY-SA 3.0
• Pineapple Cake — Photo: Karl Thomas Moore, 2016-09-19, CC BY-SA 4.0

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References

1. Chiayi City Tourism — The Origin of Turkey Rice — Official information from Chiayi City's tourism authority, recording local accounts of postwar turkey farming in Chiayi and the origin of turkey rice, with a history of more than seventy years.↩
2. Nippon.com — Iso Eikichi, the "Father of Taiwanese Agriculture" Who Bred Penglai Rice — A detailed account of the complete historical process by which Iso Eikichi and Suenaga Hitoshi tested rice varieties at Zhuzihu on Yangmingshan in 1925 and formally named Penglai rice in 1926.↩
3. StoryStudio — Why Chiayi Has Turkey Rice — A curated historical account by the content platform StoryStudio on Chiayi turkey rice, recording that Fountain Turkey Rice was founded by Lin Tian-shou in 1949 and later won first place in the Agriculture and Food Agency's "Taiwan's Ten Signature Rice Dishes" vote.↩
4. Michelin Guide — Full 2025 Taiwan List — Michelin Guide's official release of the full selections for the eighth Taiwan guide in 2025: 419 total selections, 3 three-star, 7 two-star, 43 one-star, 144 Bib Gourmand, and 7 Green Star restaurants.↩
5. Taiwan Panorama — Indigenous Cuisine, Wild Taiwanese Flavor — A Republic of China external cultural magazine published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, recording details of traditional Amis dishes such as "ten-heart greens," more than two hundred edible wild vegetables, and warrior soup.↩
6. JIBAO — Paiwan Food — A multimedia cultural database documenting the preparation of the Paiwan traditional food cinavu, using shell ginger leaves, creeping cucumber leaves, millet, and pork filling, as well as the cooking tradition of stone-slab barbecue.↩
7. FoodNEXT — Indigenous Specialty Foods — A deep survey by the food media outlet FoodNEXT of traditional foods among Taiwan's Indigenous peoples, including detailed introductions to the Pinuyumayan binaleng sour-spicy soup and abay, or millet pork dumplings.↩
8. Michelin Guide — 5 Indigenous Ingredients From Taiwan — A 2018 Michelin Guide feature on Taiwanese Indigenous ingredients, formally introducing maqaw, red quinoa, malan, pigeon pea, and Formosan aralia to an international audience.↩
9. Chen Yu-jen, A Cultural History of "Taiwanese Cuisine": The Embodiment of the State in Food Consumption — Linking Publishing — An academic monograph by Chen Yu-jen, professor in National Taiwan Normal University's Department of Taiwanese Culture, Languages and Literature, recording the emergence of the concept of "Taiwanese cuisine" in Japanese-era restaurants and the soy sauce and coastal eating traditions brought by Qing-era Minnan Han immigrants.↩
10. Liberty Times Opinion — The Past and Present of Lu Rou Fan — A Liberty Times supplement commentary column citing Qing and Japanese-era Minnan dictionaries to infer that the term and dish "lu rou fan" appeared only after the war.↩
11. Ministry of Agriculture Food and Agricultural Education Platform — Differences among Kong Rou Fan, Lu Rou Fan, and Rouzao Fan — The Ministry of Agriculture's official food and agricultural education platform, formally explaining regional differences and standard characters for "lu rou fan" in the north, "rouzao fan" in the south, and "kong rou fan" or "炕肉飯" with pork belly.↩
12. FoodNEXT — The Definition of Hakka Cuisine Is No Longer Blurry — FoodNEXT's deep account of the three Hakka food traits "fatty, salty, fragrant," recording the dietary logic of Hakka migration, hill or mountain life, and salt-based food preservation.↩
13. Hakka Stir-Fry — Wikipedia (Chinese) — The Chinese Wikipedia entry's detailed research on Hakka stir-fry, originally called "stir-fried meat," citing Hakka scholars' observation that the word "Hakka" in the dish's name was given by other groups.↩
14. Liberty Times — Stir-Fried Pork Intestine with Shredded Ginger — A Liberty Times food column introducing the history of stir-fried pork intestine with shredded ginger, recording that pork offal, including intestines, lungs, and stomach, was an important nutrient source for early Hakka people.↩
15. Lei Cha — Wikipedia (Chinese) — The Chinese Wikipedia entry's detailed history of lei cha, or "three-raw soup" of raw tea, raw ginger, and raw rice, recording its introduction to Taiwan after World War II by Hakka immigrants from Hepo, Jiexi, Guangdong, and its use in the early Republican period as a substitute infant staple.↩
16. Taiwan Awakening News — Food Comes from Homesickness: Chiao Tung Explains Taiwanese Flavor — A transcript of a May 25, 2015 interview with Chiao Tung, distinguished professor in National Central University's Department of Chinese Literature, including the core quote "There is no Sichuan-flavored beef noodle soup in Sichuan, no Mongolian barbecue in Mongolia" and the figure of "1.21 million immigrants bringing the eight major cuisines."↩
17. John Dodd, Li Chun-sheng, and the Great Age of Taiwanese Tea — Digital Archives — A curated exhibition by Academia Sinica's Digital Archives and Digital Learning Achievement Presentation Center, recording that John Dodd introduced oolong tea seedlings from Anxi, Fujian, in 1865 and exported 213,000 catties of refined tea to New York under the "Formosa Oolong" brand in 1869.↩
18. Penglai Rice — Wikipedia (Chinese) — The Chinese Wikipedia entry's complete research on the history of Penglai rice breeding, recording the 1925 Zhuzihu, Yangmingshan trials, the 1926 naming at the Taipei Railway Hotel rice meeting, and the 1929 development of Taichung 65.↩
19. Agriharvest — Historical Cooking: Western Flavors in the Japanese Period — Agriharvest's account of the historical process by which Japanese cuisine and yoshoku, including pork cutlets, omelet rice, and curry rice, were introduced to Taiwan during the Japanese period, including specific records of elites favoring sukiyaki.↩
20. Taiwan Awakening News — Food Comes from Homesickness: Chiao Tung Explains Taiwanese Flavor — Chiao Tung's interview transcript: "In 1949, 1.21 million immigrants from China's provinces poured in, bringing the eight major cuisines of Chinese cooking." A first-hand Chinese interview transcript.↩
21. Supertaste — Food Writer Wang Hao-yi: Taiwan's First Bowl of Sichuan-Style Beef Noodle Soup Was in Kaohsiung — A TVBS food channel in-depth report on Wang Hao-yi's account that "Sichuan-style beef noodle soup originated in Gangshan military dependents' villages in Kaohsiung," including the historical context of Sichuan veterans preparing spicy doubanjiang in the taste of home and Sichuan cooks using Taiwanese soybeans to replace Pixian doubanjiang's broad beans.↩
22. Din Tai Fung — Wikipedia (Chinese) — The Chinese Wikipedia entry's complete history of Din Tai Fung, from Yang Bing-yi's establishment of an oil shop on Linyi Street by Dongmen in Taipei in 1958, to selling xiaolongbao in 1972, transforming fully into a restaurant in 1974, and expanding overseas at Takashimaya Shinjuku in Tokyo in 1996.↩
23. NOWnews — The Inside Story of Din Tai Fung's Golden Eighteen Folds — A NOWnews interview report with Din Tai Fung chairman Yang Ji-hua, including his verbatim comment on the "eighteen-fold" public secret and recording Yang's 1995 succession and development of standardized xiaolongbao methods with chefs.↩
24. CNN — Taiwan's 40 Best Foods and Drinks — A CNN Travel survey of Taiwan's forty best foods and drinks, listing Din Tai Fung as the world's second-best chain restaurant and noting a reader vote that ranked Taipei among the world's best food destinations.↩
25. Taiwan Awakening News — Food Comes from Homesickness: Chiao Tung Explains Taiwanese Flavor — Chiao Tung's interview transcript: "They became the 'hometown dishes' spoken of by those mainlanders at the time, but what they ate was not necessarily the taste of their original hometowns. Yet fermented by longing for home, they still became the nostalgic flavor of collective memory."↩
26. Academia Historica — U.S. Aid, the JCRR, and Dietary Nutrition Measures in 1950s Taiwan — An Academia Historica academic PDF detailing the scale and policy logic of U.S. aid's provision of large quantities of soybeans, wheat, raw cotton, tobacco, milk powder, and other raw materials.↩
27. City GVM — The Story of Shandong Noodles in Taiwan — A Global Views "City" column recording Shandong immigrant Miao Yu-xiu's suggestion to the Minister of Economic Affairs that U.S. aid be shifted to wheat, his later establishment of Lien Hwa Flour Mill, and his title "father of flour."↩
28. Liberty Times — A Look at the Evolution of Taiwanese Breakfast — A Liberty Times food column's complete account of the evolution of Taiwanese breakfast culture, including the specific origin story of the "Yonghe Soy Milk King" cluster forming under Zhongzheng Bridge in Yonghe, New Taipei, in 1955.↩
29. Global Views Monthly — Looking at History Through Food — A Global Views in-depth report with the verbatim quote: "That noodle foods became popular in Taiwan after the war was related not only to the arrival of people from Shandong and other northern Chinese provinces where noodles were a staple, but also inseparable from the large quantities of wheat distributed to Taiwan through postwar U.S. aid."↩
30. Breakfast Shop — Wikipedia (Chinese) — The Chinese Wikipedia entry's full history of Taiwan's breakfast shop industry, including Lin Kun-yen's establishment of a Western-style breakfast shop on Bade Road in Taipei and the later timeline of chain-franchise expansion.↩
31. Business Today — Western-Style Chain Breakfast Shops Surpass Ten Thousand Locations — Business Today's survey of Taiwan's breakfast shop industry, with specific statistics of roughly 18,919 breakfast shops across Taiwan, annual output of about NT$200 billion, and the world's highest density.↩
32. Breakfast Shop — Wikipedia (Chinese) — Statistics on franchise scale for various chains: Morning McCity has about 1,400 locations across Taiwan, Rui Lin Mei & Mei reached 2,800 franchises in 2004, and Jülin Mei & Mei surpassed 1,100 in 1992.↩
33. How President Chain Store Became the Convenience Store Leader — UDN Reading — A UDN Reading in-depth account of President Chain Store's history, including the record that 7-Eleven began formally selling tea eggs in 1987 at NT$10 each.↩
34. How President Chain Store Became the Convenience Store Leader — UDN Reading — A historical record that in 1997, the year President Chain Store went public, Hsu Chung-jen added "onigiri" and "oden" items.↩
35. The Origin of National Bubble Tea Day — KidsMedia — A detailed account of the two origin stories of bubble tea, Chun Shui Tang versus Hanlin Tea Room, including both shops' 1986 independent-invention versions and the later court dispute timeline.↩
36. SET News — Ten-Year Lawsuit Between Chun Shui Tang and Hanlin Tea Room — SET News coverage of the ten-year lawsuit between Chun Shui Tang and Hanlin Tea Room over the right to claim invention of bubble tea, and the final court finding that bubble tea is a new type of beverage rather than a patented product, without confirming either party as inventor.↩
37. National Geographic — Origins and Cultural Impact of Boba Tea — National Geographic's international-media endorsement of bubble tea as born in Taiwan in the 1980s and as "one of Taiwan's most representative cultural exports."↩
38. Tatler Asia — National Bubble Tea Day — Tatler Asia's record that April 30 National Bubble Tea Day was launched in 2018 by the U.S. brand Kung Fu Tea, which was founded in New York in 2010 by three Taiwanese entrepreneurs.↩
39. Global Views Monthly — One Cup of Bubble Tea Shakes Out Taiwan's New Economic Miracle — Global Views Monthly's bubble tea economy feature, including market data that Taiwan sells 1.02 billion cups per year, 44 cups per capita, with revenue of NT$50 billion, and the global bubble tea industry is expected to reach US$4.3 billion, or NT$129 billion, by 2027.↩
40. Ministry of Foreign Affairs NSPP — The Craft of One Drink: Taiwanese Hand-Shaken Beverages Captivate the World — The Ministry of Foreign Affairs' New Southbound Policy Portal official record of Taiwanese hand-shaken drinks' global expansion: more than 40 countries and 300 cities, with specific expansion timelines for 50 Lan, Gong cha, Chun Shui Tang, and others.↩
41. Ministry of Foreign Affairs NSPP — The Craft of One Drink: Taiwanese Hand-Shaken Beverages Captivate the World — The Ministry of Foreign Affairs' official framing of hand-shaken drinks as a "tool of diplomacy," recording their policy position as an export of Taiwan's cultural soft power.↩
42. Supertaste — 2026 Taiwan Night Market Guide — A TVBS food channel complete survey of Taiwan's more than 300 night markets and the 2025 top-ten popular night market vote: Shilin, Fengjia, Garden, Raohe, Liuhe, Ningxia, Yizhong Street, Ruifeng, Shida, and Luodong.↩
43. Taiwanese Night Markets — Wikipedia (Chinese) — The Chinese Wikipedia entry's complete research on the history of Taiwanese night markets: Ningxia Night Market's origin at the Japanese-era traffic circle, Liuhe Night Market's origin in the early 1950s, Raohe Night Market as the second tourist night market, and Nanjichang Night Market's origin as a Japanese Army training ground.↩
44. Smile Taiwan — Oyster Omelet — CommonWealth Magazine's Smile Taiwan complete account of the multiple origin stories of oyster omelet: introduced by Minnan fishermen, Yan Siqi and Zheng Zhilong's naval battle food shortage, and Zheng Chenggong's military rations.↩
45. Salty Crispy Chicken — Wikipedia (Chinese) — The Chinese Wikipedia entry's detailed research on the two origin stories of salty crispy chicken, 1975 Ximending's "Taiwan's First" versus 1979 Tainan's "Youai Salty Crispy Chicken," including its Thai basil feature and its evolution from American-style fried chicken.↩
46. Changhua Beidou Ba-wan — National Cultural Memory Bank — Official data from the Ministry of Culture's National Cultural Memory Bank, recording that during the 1898 Wuxu flood, Fan Wan-ju of Beidou, Changhua, soaked sweet potatoes, kneaded them into a mass, added cauliflower, and cooked them for disaster victims, forming the prototype of Beidou ba-wan.↩
47. every little d — Where Did "Steamed in the South, Fried in the North" Come From? — A food culture media outlet's historical research on the regional difference of Taiwanese ba-wan, "steamed in the south, fried in the north," recording the specific distribution logic of frying north of Changhua, including Beidou and Changhua, and steaming in the south.↩
48. Mirror Media — Kingly Master Banquet Chef Lin Ming-tsan — A Mirror Media in-depth profile of national-treasure-level master banquet chef Lin Ming-tsan, including specific career records such as "following his father to cater bando at age 12," "at least 20,000 events," "consultant for the 2013 film Zone Pro Site," and "once invited to prepare a birthday banquet for the king of Thailand."↩
49. Agriharvest — Master Banquet Chefs Discuss Bando: Lin Ming-tsan × Chen Jia-mo — Agriharvest's professional dialogue with Lin Ming-tsan and Chen Jia-mo on bando, including the historical curve of "peak in Republic year 65 (1976), decline beginning in the early Republic year 80s (1991)," and the specific statistic that current scale is only one quarter of the former scale.↩
50. The Reporter — Old Flavors Disappearing After the Pandemic, Part One — The Reporter's in-depth interview with Lin Ming-tsan, including direct quotes such as "the number of outdoor catering banquet tables has shrunk by at least 90 percent," and "the 921 earthquake hurt a little, SARS hurt more than half, this year's pandemic may turn bando into a declining industry."↩
51. The Reporter — Old Flavors Disappearing After the Pandemic, Part One — Lin Ming-tsan's verbatim interview record on "why old-style dishes disappear": "First, they are labor-intensive; second, tastes change generation by generation. Older-generation chefs trained from the fundamentals, from slaughtering pigs and chickens to making dessert puddings and cakes themselves."↩
52. United Daily News — Song of the Twelve Bowls — United Daily News's cultural research on the old Taiwanese recitation song The New Song of the Twelve Bowls and the bando tradition of "twelve dishes," including Lin Ming-tsan's verbatim interview on the traditional meaning of the number 12.↩
53. Agriharvest — Master Banquet Chefs Discuss Bando: Lin Ming-tsan × Chen Jia-mo — Lin Ming-tsan's verbatim interview on the true meaning of bando: "Modern people's imagination of bando is that it is an occasion where everyone gathers to eat. But the meaning of bando should be a gathering for life rituals or seasonal observances."↩
54. Michelin Guide — Full 2025 Taiwan List — Michelin Guide's official release of the eighth Taiwan guide in 2025: complete selection statistics of 419 total selections, 3 three-star, 7 two-star, 43 one-star, 144 Bib Gourmand, and 7 Green Star restaurants.↩
55. Central News Agency — Full 2025 Michelin Guide Taiwan List — Central News Agency's official report on the release of the 2025 Michelin Taiwan Guide, including the three-star list, Le Palais, Taïrroir, and JL Studio, their consecutive-retention records, and the personnel change of Le Palais's former executive chef Chan Wai-keung leaving in 2024 to build Gen in Kaohsiung.↩
56. Michelin Guide — Full 2024 Taiwan List — Michelin Guide's official record for the seventh Taiwan guide in 2024, including the date record of RAW, by André Chiang, closing on December 31, 2024, as its tenth-anniversary farewell.↩
57. CNN — Tainan Is Taiwan's Food Capital — CNN Travel's international report on Tainan as "Taiwan's food capital," including the specific statistic that Tainan alone had 31 Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurants in 2024, 19 of them street-food favorites.↩
58. CNN — Tainan Is Taiwan's Food Capital — CNN directly calls Tainan "Taiwan's food capital" and records nineteen street-food Bib Gourmand restaurants.↩
59. VERSE — Taoyuan Zhongli Food Map: Four Authentic Southeast Asian Restaurants Recommended by New Immigrants — VERSE magazine's in-depth report on Taiwan's new immigrants and the expansion of Southeast Asian cuisines, including Ministry of Education 2022 statistics of 18,755 Vietnamese, 16,426 Indonesian, 12,510 Malaysian, and 2,831 Thai international students.↩
60. Smile Taiwan — Thai, Burmese, Vietnamese, and Indonesian Restaurants Gather in Taipei Gongguan — Smile Taiwan's historical research on the formation of Taipei Gongguan's Southeast Asian food street, including the fall of South Vietnam and the severing of Taiwan-Thailand diplomatic relations in 1975, the formation of the first Southeast Asian street in the late 1970s, and the specific history of a Vietnamese pho private kitchen on Roosevelt Road Section 4.↩
61. Newtalk — Taiwan's Vegetarian Population Share Is Third in the World — A 2023 Newtalk report on World of Statistics data that Taiwan's vegetarian population share is about 14 percent, roughly 3.2 million people, third in the world after India and Mexico.↩
62. Newtalk — Taiwan's Vegetarian Population Share Is Third in the World — Records CNN's 2017 international-media endorsement of Taiwan as one of the "world's ten most vegetarian-friendly cities."↩
63. Central News Agency — Mountain and Sea House Among Seven 2025 Green Stars — Central News Agency's report on the seven Green Star restaurants in the 2025 Michelin Guide, Tu Pang, Thomas Chien, Mountain and Sea House, EMBERS, Yangming Spring, Little Tree Food, and Hosu, and the Green Star selection criteria.↩
64. United Daily News — Food and Agricultural Education Act Passed on Third Reading in the Legislative Yuan — United Daily News's official record of the Legislative Yuan passing the Food and Agricultural Education Act on third reading on April 19, 2022, recording the legal provision that government agencies, state-run enterprises, administrative juridical persons, and schools should prioritize locally produced agricultural products.↩
65. CommonWealth Magazine — Grab Acquires foodpanda at 60 Percent of the Price — CommonWealth Magazine's in-depth report on Taiwan's delivery platform market acquisition case, including foodpanda Taiwan's 2025 GMV of about US$1.8 billion, market shares of 79.6 percent for foodpanda and 60.8 percent for Uber Eats, and the Fair Trade Commission's December 2024 decision to block Uber Eats' acquisition of foodpanda Taiwan.↩
66. Events in Focus — Taiwan's Foreign Distant-Water Fishery Workers — A labor-issues in-depth report by Events in Focus on controversies over working conditions for foreign migrant workers hired overseas in Taiwan's distant-water fishing industry, including the policy background of the government's refusal to let them be covered by the Labor Standards Act.↩
67. Environmental Information Center — Looking Back at the 2011 Food Safety Storm — The Environmental Information Center's in-depth review of the 2011 plasticizer incident, including the Department of Health's Food and Drug Administration detecting abnormal signals in probiotic powder, Yu Shen Chemical illegally adding DEHP to clouding agents for more than fifteen years, selling a total of 102 metric tons, and the Supreme Court sentencing the responsible persons to fifteen and twelve years.↩
68. Environmental Information Center — 2013 Oil Safety Incident — The Environmental Information Center's detailed record of the October 16, 2013 Tatung Chang Chi adulterated oil incident, including the company's use of low-cost sunflower and cottonseed oils to adulterate olive oil, addition of copper chlorophyllin for coloring, and the July 24, 2014 twelve-year sentence for company chairman Kao Chen-li.↩
69. 2014 Taiwan Inferior Oil Products Incident — Wikipedia (Chinese) — The Chinese Wikipedia entry's complete research on the 2014 Chang Guann gutter oil incident, including Chang Guann's use of 33 percent inferior oil and 67 percent lard, a 1:2 ratio, to produce "Chuan Tung Fragrant Lard Oil," its impact on major companies including Chi Mei, Hunya Foods, 85°C, and others, and the Pingtung District Court's July 24, 2015 sentencing of chairman Yeh Wen-hsiang and Tai Chi-chuan to twenty years each and fines of NT$50 million.↩