Taiwan: Food and the National Dish

A cuisine built around the night market as much as the kitchen

Taiwanese food is genuinely inseparable from the island's night market culture, with Shilin in Taipei, often considered the largest and most famous, and many others across the country serving as an everyday setting for street food, snacks and full meals alike.

The national dish: beef noodle soup

Beef noodle soup, wheat noodles served in a rich broth simmered for hours with beef, soy sauce, star anise and other spices, is sometimes considered Taiwan's national dish. Taipei has held an annual beef noodle festival since 2005, where chefs compete for the title of best beef noodles in Taiwan, and the style, red-braised, clear broth or tomato, varies from one restaurant and household to the next.

Noodles, soy and a genuinely night-market-shaped pantry

Wheat noodles, soy sauce and star anise anchor much of Taiwanese cooking, alongside a wide range of street-food staples, from oyster omelettes to stinky tofu, that define the island's night market culture as much as any sit-down restaurant dish. Fresh seafood and tropical fruit round out a pantry shaped by the island's own coastal geography.

History behind the broth

Taiwanese beef noodle soup was created by Kuomintang veterans from Sichuan province who fled mainland China to Kaohsiung and served the dish in military dependents' villages; the Taiwanese version is markedly less spicy than Sichuan cooking. Night markets, meanwhile, several of which grew up around busy temples where vendors served worshippers, developed into the dense, genuinely central food culture found across Taiwan's cities today.

Dishes to know

Five more to recognise across Taiwan:

• Oyster omelette — a savoury omelette with oysters and a starchy

sauce, a night market staple.

• Stinky tofu — fermented tofu, deep-fried or stewed, known for its

strong smell and loyal following.

• Xiaolongbao — soup-filled dumplings, though more closely associated

with Shanghai, widely served across Taiwan.

• Braised pork rice (lu rou fan) — minced pork stewed in soy sauce

and spices, served over rice.

• Bubble tea — milk tea with chewy tapioca pearls, a Taiwanese

invention now enjoyed worldwide.

Drinks

Bubble tea, invented in Taiwan and now a genuine global export, remains the island's best-known drink. Taiwanese oolong tea, grown in the island's mountainous regions, and fresh fruit juices are also widely enjoyed.

Eating as a traveller

Vegetarians will find noodle, tofu and vegetable-based dishes manageable at most night markets, which typically offer a wide range of options. Tap water is treated, though many people boil it or drink bottled water. Visiting a night market like Shilin in the evening is one of the most direct ways to see how Taiwanese people eat day to day.

What to take from the table

Beef noodle soup, simmered for hours and argued over stall by stall, captures Taiwan's food identity well: a cuisine built as much around the night market as around any single dish.