公館夜市 Gongguan Night Market @Taipei

Back in 2013, we were utterly lost trying to find 公館夜市 Gongguan Night Market, and ended up rather disappointed. This year, we decided to try again 🙂

The maps in the subway station still did not show where 公館夜市 was, but we just followed the instructions online, and got out of Exit 1.

We then realized that as this was more of an area with many shop fronts, it is known as 公館商圈 Gongguan Shopping District. And this time, we were at the correct starting point, and the push cart food stalls were actually spread out across 4 lanes, including that one lane which we went to previously.

It had been rainy all day and night, and the rain showed no sign of stopping. By now, we were quite tired of the rain and the damp feeling. Off we went to 宫綺308 Miyazaki for some proper steamboat dinner first. Battleship!!!!!

It was actually opposite 天外天, a buffet steamboat available at various locations in Taipei, and incidentally, we had our very first steamboat in Taipei there, back in 2009. However, it was twice the price of 宫綺, and we were still hoping to try out some street foods if there were any interesting ones 😛

The basic price for a set at 宫綺308 Miyazaki is NT308 (which is why the number 308 is in their shop name), and one could choose one main meat or seafood. For mixed options, there is an additional NT30. All sets include choice of soup base (topping up is self service), one carb (rice or noodles), free flow of drinks, and a huge tub of vegetables.

We took the NT338 set of 牛三寶拼盤 Beef Platter (3 types of beef) and 海陸雙拼 Fish plus Pork Platter, and our soup bases were 日式昆布 Kelp and 濃厚豚骨 Pork Bone soups.

The kelp soup base was light and sweet, and we thought it was great for items that we wanted to taste the natural flavours. The pork bone soup base was excellent for soaking tofu puffs and other beancurd stuff. The vegetables tub contained small quantities of everything, including enoki, black fungus, tofu puff, beancurd, beancurd skin, lettuce, daikon, carrot, pumpkin, baby corn, fish cake, crab stick, fish roe ball, cabbage, etc. I could not finish my share of food!

The fish slices were quite fresh, but the sliced meat were frozen when served, and we could not really taste the difference in the quality of the cuts. Nonetheless, it was exceptionally enjoyable after an entire day out in the rain!

After our hearty dinner, we continued shopping in the area, for being near the university meant that there were many trendy items for sale, including plant accessories for hair (which was apparently the current craze right now)…

We also checked out the 4 lanes of street food, but only 姜蔬菜大蛋餅 caught our eye. The crepes were cooked in batches, and we got the second last piece, so we only had to queue a really short while. We tried the 原味大蛋餅 Original Crepe (NT35), as that appeared to be the most popular. We were glad that we had save some of our stomach space for this!

This thick layer of crunchy cabbage with slightly runny egg mix on top of a thin layer of crepe reminded us a little of okonomiyaki minus the flour, but with more defined layers of texture. It was very delicious! We were happy to end our day out with this delicious snack 🙂