Finding food in Taipei is both the easiest and hardest thing we encountered. Taiwanese food culture is essentially structured around going out to eat for all your meals, and why wouldn’t you when your country is famed for being one of the most dynamic and versatile places to eat in Asia?

We like to think of ourselves as adventurous foodies (in the sense that we’re obsessed with eating) that are constantly on a budget, and so we found that the usual online recommendations by tourists or foreigners living in Taipei tended to be way beyond what we could afford. To top it off, a lot of these suggestions were definitely aimed at a more refined tourist experience.

Our food experience tended to include a lot of pointing at pictures, as well as using our limited Mandarin language skills (meaning that we often found ourselves eating byefan – rice, and gwotye – potstickers). But this doesn’t mean that we had been living on a relatively repetitive diet.

Through the joint efforts of Google Translate and our amazing local friends, here is part one of some of our favourite types of restaurants and a few recommendations if you ever need to find something to eat on a local level/budget:

Breakfast

Taiwanese breakfasts are great. Our favourite places to go were the equivalents of the British greasy spoon. Here they sell burgers, toasted sandwiches, noodles, fried rice, hash browns, potstickers, Taiwanese pancakes and plenty more, for remarkably cheap prices!

The trick to finding these ‘brunch’ restaurants are either through wondering around backstreets at 7am or checking Google Maps for the Chinese word:

早午餐

This literally means early afternoon lunch, but is your gateway to a cheap cup of coffee and a filling start to the day.

Some of our favourite brunch places, as organised by chronological area we stayed in:

Taipei Main Station

Sunflower, 向日葵早午餐, No. 65, Section 1, Kaifeng St, Zhongzheng District, Taipei City, Taiwan 100, open 7am-1:30pm

Menu

The potstickers are a must, as is watching people devour the biggest hamburgers you’ll ever see.

Guting

Tomato Burger, 蕃茄地漢堡, 100, Taiwan, Taipei City, Zhongzheng District, 台北市中正區同安路22號 (Menu n/a)

Great for your standard bacon and egg on toast or burger bun! And really close to the Guting MRT, a really interesting find in such an affluent area.

New Taipei City

Q Burger, 242, Taiwan, New Taipei City, Xinzhuang District, 建中街86號, open 6am-13:30pm

Menu

Slightly nicer than others, simply because we believe it to be a chain. The coffee in here is great, as is the patience of the waitress, who seemed to just find us amusing spending 20 minutes trying to google translate their vast selection of waffles.

Dongmen

瑞麟美而美, 106, Taiwan, Taipei City, Da’an District, 信義路二段86巷6號

Menu

Easily one of the best places we stumbled upon, this place has an extensive Manga selection and is often filled to the brim with people from all walks of life munching on fried rice and reading a well-worn copy of One Piece.

Minquan W. Road Station

Handmade Cake, 手工蛋餅, 103, Taiwan, Taipei City, Datong District, 昌吉街31號

No menu available online, but this is one of the only places we’ve been to where the owners could speak English decently enough to get us what we wanted! Also, you HAVE to try the danbing (Taiwanese pancakes) here! The best one we’ve had in Taipei.

We hope you have as great a time exploring very unhealthy food options for breakfast as we did! Next up in part two are reviews of our favourite restaurants in the city, coming soon!