Taiwanese "Handy Dishes": The Meaning, Origin, and Signature Cuisine of Banquet Culture

30 Second Overview: "Handy dishes" (tshiú-lōo-tshài) is the Taiwanese term for "signature cuisine,"¹ referring to dishes that require genuine skill, lack standardized recipes, and are passed down through oral tradition from master to apprentice. The most concentrated stage where this is displayed is in the tradition of the banzhuo (Taiwanese banquet)—a traditional Taiwanese feast set up roadside with temporary tents. Due to its poor land quality, Neimen, Kaohsiung, unexpectedly became the township with the highest density of caterers in Taiwan; during its golden age, one catering company hosted 25,000 banquets annually. However, from hotel weddings to COVID-19, banquet orders have shrunk by ninety percent over twenty years, taking away not just the flavor of the food, but also the human connection of "returning the leftover broth" (huan cai wei).

In the spring of 2020, several new flags were raised in the temple courtyard of Zizhu Temple in Neimen, Kaohsiung. They featured images of braised meat, shark fin soup, and eight-treasure balls—not as banquet advertisements, but as roadside stalls run by caterers. Xue Meng-hui, 48, was flipping ants on a tree while explaining to reporters: "There are no banquets now; people still have to live!"²

The Xue family is a "caterer lineage" in Neimen. Xue Meng-hui began working as a caterer with his father, Xue Qing-ji, starting in high school, accumulating over fifty years of experience across two generations. Flipping through his father's work diary from that era, it was filled entirely with the lunar calendar: hosting 25,000 banquets a year, managing dozens of events on major days, chefs leaving before dawn, finishing late at noon, and having no idea if they slept four hours².

But the pandemic in 2020 froze everything. The revenue of catering and group meal contracting decreased by 32.3% annually³, and banquet orders shrank by ninety percent. Xue Meng-hui had over five hundred banquets canceled in February and March, forcing him to work at a friend's bento shop.

This was not the first crisis for the banquet industry, but perhaps the last.

Banzhuo: The Roadside Banquet Hall

Banzuo (pān-toh) is a traditional feast from Minnan culture, brought to Taiwan by immigrants and documented since the Qing dynasty⁴. Whether it's weddings, funerals, temple festivals, or milestone celebrations—the host invites caterers to set up tents in temple courtyards, school grounds, or on roadsides, starting the cooking process right there. Unlike restaurants, banquets adhere to strict customs: dish selection, serving order, and seating arrangements are all meticulously planned.

A typical banquet has about twelve dishes, emphasizing "beginning, development, turn, and conclusion" (qi-cheng-zhuan-he)⁵: cold appetizers open for guests to be seated, soups warm the stomach, main courses—such as salted crab rice cake, steamed grouper, or Buddha Jumps Over the Wall—are served in the middle section, and it concludes with chicken broth, desserts, and fruit, symbolizing completeness. Every dish is a "handy dish": the salted crab rice cake requires precise timing of steaming to infuse the crab roe into the grains; Buddha Jumps Over the Wall involves processing over twenty ingredients before sealing and simmering; and braised meat must be uniformly fatty and lean, melting in the mouth but not falling apart.

📝 Curatorial Viewpoint: Many people describe restaurants as "literary stages," while banquets are "martial arts stages." The caterer's test is not just culinary skill—regardless of strong winds or heavy rain, broken bridges or landslides, if the host hasn't canceled, they must fulfill their duty.

Wang Yi-yong, a veteran caterer from Tainan, once catered 120 tables at a school hall in Kaohsiung. At five in the evening, a downpour arrived, flooding up to his ankles; the fire was extinguished by water, and pots floated on the water; even the trout preparing for cooking had swum away over ten. Wang Yi-yong immediately cut open the canvas tent to drain the water, moved the kitchen equipment under the eaves, rolled up his sleeves, and caught fish first. He finished with a substitute ingredient from the reserve table because one trout was missing, and all guests ate².

Neimen: The Home of Caterers on Barren Land

Neimen, Kaohsiung, is surrounded by mountains, and its soil is alkaline white loamy soil, which is unfavorable for farming; only drought-resistant bamboo can survive. Before the 1960s, residents survived by packaging Flag Mountain bananas in woven bamboo baskets; after low-cost cardboard boxes took over the market, the bamboo weaving industry declined².

Yet, during that era, Taiwan's economy was taking off, and the demand for banquets surged. The people of Neimen, whose land could not grow anything, found a new path—cooking feasts for others.

Neimen has dense temples and grand ceremonial events, creating continuous demand for banquets, keeping caterers in business. Xue Qing-ji, Meng-hui's father, partnered with an apprentice, a chicken vendor, and a pig vendor to establish the "Siheyi" (Four-in-One) company, providing comprehensive services including ingredient supply, cooking, and table/chair rental². After two or three chefs gained experience, they started their own businesses. The banquet energy of Neimen grew like a snowball, becoming the township with the highest density of caterers in Taiwan, known as the "Caterer Homeland."⁶

📝 Curatorial Viewpoint: The story of Neimen is a common Taiwanese narrative of "disadvantageous transformation": precisely because the land was poor and there were no other options, it forced the creation of an industrial cluster. Banquets sustained countless families; residents from Shalin District, half an hour's drive away, also came to work as water carriers.

The golden age lasted roughly from 1988 to 2000. Xue Meng-hui recalls that during Lee Teng-hui's presidency, banquets were held not only for traditional "Eight Celebrations and One Funeral" but also when children got into doctoral programs or won money in pigeon racing. On auspicious days marked by the lunar calendar, the temple entrance and roadside featured "Heisong Grand Hotel"—early banquet tents provided by beverage companies, bearing Heisong soda advertisements, becoming synonymous with banquets².

The Leftover Broth: The Caterer's Final Exam

Among all the handy dishes at a banquet, the most significant is not Buddha Jumps Over the Wall or salted crab rice cake—it is the final "leftover broth" (cai wei tang).

Many people think leftover broth is just scraps, but Huang Wan-ling, a mother figure of Taiwanese cuisine, spent thirty years clarifying this misconception. "As the name suggests, it is the chef's last dish, the one they make before leaving. Sixty years ago, no one questioned that leftover broth was scraps; it was even a major dish testing the skill of the master."⁷

A genuine leftover broth requires pre-retaining ingredients from seven classic banquet dishes: braised soup, five-leaf branches, braised meat, bamboo shoot and pickled cabbage ribs stew, marinated flatfish and cabbage stew, white radish and pork tripe soup, and fish ball soup⁸. From the moment guests eat the first dish, the caterer is silently calculating—how much to save, when to put it in the pot, and what proportion to maintain.

The Taiwanese term "tie" (kat), means harmonization or integration. Perfecting the leftover broth takes four to eight hours, involving constant stirring, tasting, and adjustment; temperature, humidity, heat level, and ingredient condition are all judged in real-time. Huang Wan-ling herself conducted a trial run alone, taking six days⁷.

💡 Did You Know? "Returning the leftover broth" (huan cai wei) is the most humanistic part of banquets. After the feast ends, the host sends strong members to deliver the leftover broth door-to-door to neighboring helpers. "Huan" is pronounced with a third tone, carrying gratitude shown through bowing. Neighbors cook it again and add cabbage, turning it into two pots. If the leftover broth is not perfected, the entire village knows the next day, and the caterer's business for the following year is directly affected⁹.

Huang Wan-ling states: "Almost all Taiwanese dishes carry immigrant influences, but the leftover broth does not; it is a dish that has adapted to this land over three hundred years, it is the root of Taiwan."⁷

Two Decades of Decline

The crisis in the banquet industry did not begin with the pandemic. Secretary Zhong Yue-chun of the Chiayi City Food Service Industry Labor Union marked the decline with three disasters: "921 caused a small injury, SARS caused more than half an injury; this year's epidemic might make banquets a declining industry."²

The more fundamental reason is the change in lifestyle. Hotel weddings have replaced roadside banquets, and young people are unwilling to learn the physically demanding skills of catering. Small and medium-sized enterprises in processing and export zones have closed down as industries moved westward—Xue Meng-hui said that some old clients hadn't hired him for a year or two, only to find the business was already shut².

"We are not just worried about this year; we are worried that people will stop inviting (holding banquets) as a habit." — Cai Yu-feng, a banquet operator from Tainan²

This sentence reveals the deepest fear of the catering industry. The disappearance of banquets is not just a business failure; it is an entire system of social operation: temples drive demand for feasts, caterers support water carriers and suppliers, and "returning the leftover broth" maintains neighborly relations. When this cycle breaks, more than just the industrial chain is broken.

The Rescuers

Some are desperately trying to preserve these flavors.

Huang Wan-ling initially only wanted to be a visiting writer, interviewing old caterers to write stories. However, when the master saw her as incapable, he suddenly shed tears—because no one else was willing to learn. That drop of tear changed her life's direction: she started as a water carrier, running hundreds of feasts with multiple caterers, training intensely to maintain stamina⁷. Starting in 2011, she sequentially published Caterer Banquets, Grandma's Kitchen, Old Taiwanese Cuisine, Century Taiwan Ancient Flavors, and Authentic Taiwanese Cuisine, preserving the methods and local stories of old Taiwanese cuisine through writing¹⁰.

Another form of rescue is commercial transformation. Master Along from Neimen turned braised meat and Buddha Jumps Over the Wall into frozen vacuum-packed goods for e-commerce¹¹; some caterers transitioned to making offerings for religious worship, because even without large events, worship never stops². However, the experience of a roadside setup, on-site cooking, and twelve dishes following the beginning-development-turn-conclusion cannot be replicated by frozen packaging.

The cruelest aspect of handy dishes is this: it is a living skill, passed from person to person. How many grams one handful of salt contains, when to shift from high heat to low heat, what color "is right"—these oral formulas exist only in the master's hands and eyes. When people are gone, the food is gone.

Xue Meng-hui flips through his father's diary, where the handwriting marks a period of golden age for the industry. What he doesn't know is that this diary records not just menus and table counts—it records how Taiwanese people celebrated, how they showed gratitude, and how they connected the entire village with one pot of broth.

Further Reading:

• Taiwanese Banquet Culture — The concentrated stage for handy dishes: from the kingdom of caterers raised in barren Neimen to the knowledge of feast rituals spanning humans, gods, and ghosts.
• Chen Yu-xun — Director of Caterer, who brought endangered skills like chicken, pig tripe, and turtle onto the big screen.
• Taiwanese Seafood Culture — The context of Taiwanese seafood on the main table at banquets: salted crab, lobster, steamed fish.

Image Source

• Hero: Three-cup chicken, Photo Archon6812, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

References