Monday, March 15, 2010

Ning Chi Spicy Tripe Hot Pot, Taipei

Hot Pot

I guess it's difficult to avoid hot pot in Taiwan, eh? Well, I was told that this was perhaps one of the first places in Taipei to start serving this stuff (9 GuangFu South Road Lane 200, 2772-1912). It in fact has developed such a reputation that it spurned a bunch of knock-offs of the same name. We came down to the original, and it was definitely old school: when we got there, the proprietor was sleeping on a makeshift bed using a bunch of chairs placed side by side. It was worth a chuckle, I suppose.

Yeah, this grimey place was basically the complete antithesis of upscale Ding Wang. They featured a giant bucket of sa cha sauce if you wanted it, and the preparation techniques were very crude: the meat was sliced so thickly (and it was of such low quality) that biting into it was like trying to eat a Persian rug. But the broth worked for me. It had such a pleasantly natural hint of sweetness that I had to reach for a few extra scoops.

Actually, one of my colleagues pointed out to me that the thing to eat here was the namesake tripe. And he was right: it was so tender that I didn't even bother with the meat anymore. Perhaps more interesting was the sliced aorta (yes, that's right - the giant artery), which turned out to be tasteless, but texture-wise was a bit like eating cuttlefish. Gross? Perhaps. But it was good to come here just to check it out, even if I really don't plan to come back.

1 comment:

  1. Went there during my last trip to Taiwan, despite they are being the oldest and most famous during the 80s (according to my uncle), I find other hot pots are nicer. Yeah, the meat are TOO think!

    ReplyDelete

Please note that comments are being moderated in an effort to contain spam, so it may take some time before your comment is published.