#18: The Suen Family Taipei Address Book

The product of over ten years of eating, and counting.

I spent a few summers in Taipei as a teen. My sister and I were ostensibly there to improve our Mandarin — a convenient academic excuse to drink bubble tea like water and eat very well for very cheap three, but more often four, times a day. Having grown up rewatching The Parent Trap, those daily classes in an echoey, likely since renovated, university building were our closest analogue to a woodsy sleep-away camp.

It was there that we picked up Taiwanese accents that we held onto for years; I got my period there on my 14th birthday; torrential rains fell punctually at three to briefly ease the day’s humidity; and almost everyone competed for the title of the warmest person we’d ever met.

Unsurprisingly, our family grew attached to the city and made the conveniently short flight at least annually to revisit our old haunts. After a long hiatus (thanks largely to the pandemic) my parents and I made a long-awaited trip back last week.

This list is the result of those visits and spans both old favourites and a few new finds — many are restaurants, to no one’s surprise. I hope you visit and find comfort in the city’s Banyan-lined roads, towering mountains of shaved ice, and convenience stores that greet you with the scent of tea eggs. The comments are open to subscribers if you’d like to share a recommendation or anecdote (or two).