What to Eat in Taipei: Night Markets, Beef Noodles and Xiaolongbao

In Taipei, eating is the national pastime. Taiwanese cuisine weaves together southern Fujianese (Hokkien) coastal flavours, regional recipes brought from across mainland China in 1949, Japanese precision and indigenous ingredients, expressed in both Michelin-recognised dumpling houses and open-air street stalls called xiaochi ("small eats"). Plan your days around a savoury breakfast, a midday bowl of beef noodles or soup dumplings near Dongmen or Taipei 101, and a night-market graze after dark.

Which Taipei night market to visit: Raohe, Ningxia, Shilin and Tonghua

• Raohe Street Night Market (best all-round first night market): stretching 600 metres along a single street right beside Songshan MRT Station (Green Line Exit 5) and the ornate 1753 Songshan Ciyou Temple, Raohe is compact and easy to walk in one loop. Join the fast-moving queue right inside the eastern gate for Fuzhou Black Pepper Pork Buns (hujiao bing) baked crisp against the vertical clay walls of charcoal ovens, followed by herbal pork-rib soup, flame-torched beef cubes and sweet potato balls.
• Ningxia Night Market (best food-focused local market): fifteen minutes' walk north of Taipei Main Station or west of Zhongshan, narrow Ningxia focuses almost entirely on traditional Taiwanese snacks: look for crispy taro balls stuffed with salted egg yolk and pork floss, sizzling oyster omelettes (o-a-jian) cooked with sweet potato starch, and braised pork rice.
• Shilin Night Market and Linjiang Street (Tonghua) Night Market: Shilin (at Jiantan MRT Station) is Taipei's largest market with an underground food hall and giant fried chicken cutlets (da ji pai), while Linjiang Street / Tonghua sits walking distance from Taipei 101 with sesame-oil chicken and guabao.

Xiaolongbao, beef noodle soup, Taiwanese breakfast and bubble tea

Beyond the night markets, taste five benchmark classics: Xiaolongbao (soup dumplings) folded with eighteen pleats around pork and rich jellied broth (at Din Tai Fung locations in Taipei 101 and Xinyi, or local dumpling houses around Dongmen); Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup (niuroumian), served in spicy red-braised broth (hongshao) or clear broth (qingdun) with chewy wheat noodles and tender shank; Luroufan (braised minced pork belly over rice) and Guabao (steamed buns with pork belly, pickled mustard greens and crushed peanut powder); a morning Taiwanese breakfast of warm soy milk (doujiang), flaky flatbread (shaobing) and scallion egg crepes (danbing); and Bubble Milk Tea or Mango Shaved Ice on Yongkang Street during our three-day Taipei itinerary.