錦州街 Jinzhou Street @Zhongshan District, Taipei

Happy couple!

We were staying at 新驛旅店復興北路店 CityInn Hotel Plus Fuxing North Road branch, and just around the corner from the hotel, half-way to the 捷運中山國中站 MRT Zhongshan Junior High School Station, is this awesome food street, and was the recommended go-to street for food!

There is a variety of food options here, ranging from small eateries of braised pork belly rice, noodle stalls. dessert stalls, Japanese restaurants, to Italian restaurants, trendy cafes, and a vegetarian buffet restaurant!

We had popped by for lunch when we shifted from our previous hotel, and brunch on our last day in Taipei. Spoilt for choices, but we had only enough stomach space to try the following places.

• 阿鴻豆花店

Recommended by hotel staff when we mentioned we wanted to try cold noodles.

• 特製涼麵 Special Cold Noodles (NT$40 for small): Simple but delicious slightly chilled noodles with lightly spicy sesame and soy sauce. Would be better if it was colder though.
• 綜合豆花+2種料 Beancurd Tofu with 2 ingredients (NT$40): The beancurd was dense, but still quite smooth. The original sweetness level was not too high. We tried 芋圓 yam ball toppings and 白木耳 white fungus toppings. The yam balls were bouncy and chewy, but there was barely a hint of yam. The white fungus was was quite bland but that was pretty standard, as it was not soaked in the sweet soup.

Shark Bites Toast 鯊魚咬吐司

With a very interesting name and 43 branches all over Taiwan, this was recommended online for its milk shake.

• 澎派的羅浮火腿國王 French Toast Set (NT$169 with choice of drink): The breakfast set was quite nice, with French toast, scrambled egg, salad, a huge slab of ham and bacon! The 木瓜牛奶 papaya smoothie was excellent, not overly milky, and it was a very delicious blend with a good balance.
• 庫克雞翅 Fried Chicken Wings (NT$120 for 5 pieces): Super duper salty 😮 We wrapped the meat with the salad from the breakfast set to make it more palatable.

It was a pretty relax environment, not a bad place to hang out with friends. Unfortunately, service that day was less than desirable. The waiter that served us seemed quite sleepy and grouchy He appeared to give an inward sigh when I requested for an additional chair to put my bag and reluctantly grabbed a chair from another table. When he placed a cup with 2/3 filled with papaya smoothie on our table, he explained in a very matter-of-fact manner that as they had ran out of glassware (at 10:30 in a half-full cafe, 2.5 hours after the cafe has opened), so our papaya milk shake had to be served in a take-away cup, so the volume may seem lesser. However, 5 minutes later, the milk shake was served to the next table in glass cup! Could they not have wash a cup for us? Kinda left a dull mark on our visit.

旅沐豆行 Coffee Remus

Just opposite Shark Bites Toast was Coffee Remus, and we read that they roast their own coffee, so off we went for coffee! The aromatic coffee fragrance welcomed us the minute we pulled open the door!

• 旅沐鮮奶茶 Green Tea with Milk (NT$70)：Topped with lime zest and honey, there was a refreshing citrus twist to the milk tea, not bad. It went cold pretty fast though.
• 拿鐡 Latte (NT$80): Very smooth, and not at all acidic, this aromatic mug of coffee was of medium strength. Hubby enjoyed it very much… his first proper cup of coffee in a cafe for the trip 🙂