Taiwanese Porridge

So I went to Shin Yeh for the Taiwanese sweet potato porridge but I was not done. I had to go to another famous place for porridge the next night and we ended up at Xiao Li Zi.

This stretch of shop houses is famous for their porridge. We had wanted to go to the next shop but was closed for renovation. So we ended up here and the food was good too. The shop is two storey and the food is all located on the ground floor. Some tables on the ground floor too. And during dinner time, it gets crowded. We had to wait for some folks to vacate their table before we started ordering.

The front is where the food display is.

Rows and rows of food displayed. You pick up a tray and point at what you want and they put it on a dish for you.

A cooking station to blanch the vegetables

Some of the food are kept on warmers. Like this cabbage with pork balls - the pork balls are called shi zhi tou or translated “lion head”. Called that because the pork balls are shaped into round balls resembling the lion’s head.

Bai cai with beancurd skin.

And what was (to me at least) the most delicious dish of the night - duck blood! I believe they no longer allow blood to be sold in Singapore so this dish is a must have for me. And they cook it with sian chye (salted mustard green). It is absolutely delicious!

And the other dish that was nice was the pork trotter. Braised till the meat is tender.

We also had steamed fish which was ok - nothing fantastic.

And chai po nearing - pickled turnip omelette. Nice but a far cry from Shin Yeh.

And the xiao yu hua shen which is also not as nice as the Shin Yeh.

Overall, it was a nice meal and an inexpensive one. My hosts told me the meal cost TWD1,200 which is around SGD50 for three persons. Certainly cheaper than in Singapore. And there were a lot more dishes we did not try. Ready to head back to Taipei - save for another day. But for that night, I became the vampire!