Xiaolizi Rice Porridge is a restaurant on Taipei City’s Fuxing South Road. Even before it opens in the early evening, there are already customers waiting here with their families. At five o’clock, the lights inside the restaurant are flicked on, shining upon a dazzling array of traditional Taiwanese dishes on the buffet bar: braised pork, minced pork with pickles, braised napa cabbage, xuelihong (red-in-snow mustard), oysters with fermented black beans, and many more. Pleasing to the eye as well as to the taste buds, these authentic local dainties are impossible to resist.

Changing times

“Many people come here to relive their memories,” says Steven Lai, owner of Xiaolizi.

Now in its 34th year, Xiaolizi grew up with many of its customers and has witnessed major changes in the capital city. Thirty years ago, the East District of Taipei was just starting to rise in importance. Except for Linsen North Road and its back streets, most places did not attract visitors in the evenings as they do today. “Dunhua South Road only took you as far as Heping East Road. The last section hadn’t been pushed through yet. So people traveling between Taipei and Yonghe, Zhonghe, and Xindian in New Taipei had to go via Fuxing South Road.” The hustle and bustle there inspired Lai to open a late-night restaurant.

The ready business opportunities on Fuxing South Road led to the rapid rise of restaurants specializing in congee and other savory dishes. New eateries cropped up one after another. When night fell, the entire road was lit up, full of life and drama. The later the hour, the livelier the place became, with the restaurants providing valet parking. Many of us who were born in the 1960s and 70s will remember the mind-boggling spectacle of double and triple parking in this hubbub of late-night snacking.

Times have changed, but Xiaolizi continues to offer family-style dishes. It insists on time-honored flavors, braising pork thoroughly until it emits a sweetly salty fragrance, and making dried radish omelets that are deliciously golden and tender. Lai has always been mighty proud of his congee, which is the heart and soul of this type of Taiwanese cuisine. “Our congee has a firmness to it, heartily thick but not mushy.” He has carefully selected suitably moist Taiwanese-grown rice, slowly simmering it in a traditional cast-iron cooker to blend the fragrance of rice with that of sweet potatoes. Plain as it looks, Lai’s congee actually brims with subtle flavors.

Restaurants specializing in congee and savory side dishes came into being because of the culture of late-night snacking. Small dishes of common foods such as braised pork, sweet soya strips, and yuxiang braised eggplant evoke a familiar sense of home.

Steven Lai, owner of Xiaolizi, thinks that congee has a life of its own. The taste of congee is best—thick but not mushy—during the hour after it is cooked.

Origins

Taiwan’s economy used to be predominantly agricultural. Rice was a cash crop, so people had to economize on its consumption. Congee was common fare in rural Taiwan precisely because, mixed with sweet potatoes or with other grains, it required less rice. Chen Yu-jen, a professor in the Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages, and Literature at National Taiwan Normal University, is versed in the cultural history of Taiwanese food. She tells us that a family’s financial situation would determine the ratio of rice to sweet potato in the congee on their dining table. “Rice was a staple food for all, but how thick your congee was and when you ate it had to do with your social class, economic status, and occupation.”

The side dishes accompanying plain congee were often made with local ingredients, including homegrown vegetables, either fresh or pickled. In coastal areas, people would also pickle fish, prawns, and shellfish with salt to make a condiment known in Taiwanese as kiam-ke, or they would make dried fish. These dainties could either be eaten directly or be further processed and cooked with other ingredients to make classic home-style dishes such as minced pork with pickles, and oysters with fermented black beans.

This dietary habit entered restaurants in the 1960s and eventually evolved into the special type of cuisine we all recognize today. In the 1960s, nightclubs became fashionable venues for business networking in Taiwan. After heavy dining and drinking there, customers would want to head over to another place for a more relaxed atmosphere, where they could enjoy less greasy snacks that were kinder to their stomachs. It was in this context that restaurants serving congee and savory side dishes started to make a name for themselves.

As the nightclubs gained even more popularity in the 1970s, so the market for congee grew. The evening economy flourished, and the increase in networking and socializing continued to drive up demand for after-­party venues. Even hotels and Western-style restaurants jumped on the bandwagon. There were places that served steak or Italian cuisine by day, but offered only congee at night. Chen Yu-jen compares their nocturnal transformations to the story of Cinderella.

Chen tells us that as families started to dine out more often, restaurants specializing in home-style foods such as congee began to appeal to a wider customer base. With the growth of the economy, customers had more money at their disposal for gastronomic indulgence, and this encouraged restaurants to expand their menus by adding unique artisan delicacies and using various kinds of seafood and other high-quality ingredients. Offering ever more refined choices, these places gradually developed into the kind of Taiwanese-style restaurant that we see today.

At 5 a.m. in Donggang, Pingtung County, people start their day with a meal of simple downhome cooking from a snack stall near the ferry terminal.

Congee restaurants bring together a rich variety of Taiwanese flavors and are on many international tourists’ must-visit lists.

The foods displayed on the buffet bar look and smell scrumptious, titillating customers’ taste buds.

Gourmet cooking

Congee used to be ubiquitous in Taiwan. In the 1980s, there were vendors parking their small trucks along the roads, where they put up parasols and sold congee and an abundance of savory foods. Even though such street scenes are becoming something of a rarity now, the same familiar dishes have long since found their way into modern Taiwanese-style restaurants, where they are given exquisite reinterpretations.

For example, omelet cooked with dried radish (tsai-bo-neng in Taiwanese) is now a classic item on the menus of Taiwanese-style restaurants, including Shin Yeh, a Taipei-based establishment popular with international tourists. Lin Hechen, director of Taiwanese cuisine at Shin Yeh, tells us that tsai-bo-neng is one of their signature dishes and is among the top-three must-eats for foreign visitors. Dried radish (tsai-bo) takes time to develop its flavor and represents Taiwan’s culture of frugality and local adaptability. Whereas homemade tsai-bo-neng usually has an irregular, lumpy appearance, Shin Yeh’s chefs have crafted theirs into a perfectly round shape of even thickness, like a Spanish tortilla. Lin says with a smile that he can always get the idea across to guests from other countries when he introduces tsai-bo-neng as “Taiwanese pizza.”

Established in 1977 to offer congee and savory snacks, Shin Yeh has never ceased to breathe new life into its menus. Since 2018, the restaurant has been recommended in the Michelin Guide several times. Endowing traditional Taiwanese dishes—tsai-bo-neng, fried pork liver, almond tofu—with the luster of gourmet cooking, Shin Yeh epitomizes the development of local cuisine in modern Taiwan. Its menus bring together home-style dishes, common snacks, and meals traditionally provided only at high-end local restaurants and streetside banquets. These culinary delights offer clues to Taiwan’s history, and betoken the hetero­geneity and rich diversity of the island’s ­cuisine.

When she first opened Shin Yeh, Li Xiuying, now president of Shin Yeh Restaurant Group, made it known that her restaurant would do its best to fulfill every customer’s gastronomic wishes. True to this founding philosophy, Shin Yeh’s menus have been constantly adjusted over the years. An example is its “roasted mullet roe and cuttlefish,” a classy dish invented by chef Chen Weinan to cater to discerning tastes. To create this artisan dainty, Chen wraps fish roe in dried seaweed and in cuttlefish paste, deep-fries it, and cuts it into slices, which he then arranges into the shape of a peacock. Chen has also drawn on his own background in elaborate hotel-style cooking to bring out rare items usually seen only on special occasions such as streetside banquets. Shin Yeh has thus incorporated various culinary traditions into its vision of modern Taiwanese cuisine, providing wider access to the island’s food culture.

Roasted Mullet Roe and Cuttlefish

Shin Yeh’s chef Chen Weinan wraps mullet roe in dried seaweed and cuttlefish paste, deep-fries it, and cuts it into slices. He then arranges the roe and the garnishes into the shape of a peacock. This is one of the restaurant’s classic dishes. (courtesy of Shin Yeh Restaurant Group)

Omelet with Dried Radish (tsai-bo-neng)

This is a classic item at Taiwanese-style restaurants. People used to pickle and dry radishes so they would keep longer, and eggs were easy to come by in farming areas. A traditional dish evoking memories of the island’s rural past, tsai-bo-neng carries a distinctly Taiwanese flavor. By giving it a smooth, round shape, Shin Yeh has turned tsai-bo-neng into a symbol of perfection.

Reaching the wider world

As Taiwanese-style restaurants have become more and more popular, Taiwanese cuisine has left an indelible impression on many foreign palates. A Japanese publisher invited Shin Yeh to put together a recipe book to help Japanese readers appreciate the minutiae of Taiwanese cuisine, including local ingredients and condiments. When Covid interrupted international tourism, some Japanese editors invited Taiwanese-style restaurants to collaborate on magazine articles on Taiwanese cooking. Being able to cook Taiwanese food at home helped alleviate many Japanese people’s nostalgia for Taiwanese cuisine.

For many, congee and other Taiwanese foods can assuage their yearnings for home. Lin He­chen tells us about a Singaporean customer who recently visited Shin Yeh for marinated fresh­water clams. While this dish cannot be more common in Taiwan, the customer had been hankering for it in Singapore for four or five years. Congee and its accompanying dishes evoke memories of dining with our families; when we’re ill, a bowl of warm congee can help us regain energy. Chen Yu-jen thinks that these homely foods are associated with everyday life, comfort, and intimate feelings, conferring a sense of warmth. They enrich our understanding of how generations of Taiwanese people have lived, and represent Taiwan’s food culture in important ways.

Congee, accompanied with savory dishes, has its origin in home cooking. Many Taiwanese people have congee for breakfast or for late-night refreshments. Congee stalls continue to flourish in traditional markets today. This photo shows an eatery near Taipei’s Yongle Market. It serves breakfast only, giving space to a different food vendor for the rest of the day.

Familiar everyday dishes have found their place in restaurants, where they are given exquisite reinterpretations. Modern Taiwanese cuisine is defined by these culinary transformations.

The foods displayed on the buffet bar look and smell scrumptious, titillating customers’ taste buds.