An Off-Putting Menu Option
—The Origin of “Flies’ Heads”
Esther Tseng / photos by Jimmy Lin / tr. by Phil Newell
October 2024
Though the name of the dish may be disconcerting, it is a favorite with many epicures.
The late veteran journalist Norman Fu, who was assigned to the Washington DC beat for 31 years, mentioned in his Deep Throat and Whistleblower, a book about English slang, that the owners of a Chinese restaurant in the States used word-for-word translations of the Chinese names of the dishes on their menu, so that minced pork vermicelli, stewed pork meatballs, minced pork with Chinese chives, and sliced beef and beef offal in chili sauce came out respectively as “ants climb up a tree,” “lion’s head,” “flies’ heads,” and “husband-and-wife lung slices.” These names shocked English-speaking patrons.
“Flies’ heads” (minced pork with chopped chives), invented in Taiwan, can be seen as a representative dish of “dark cuisine.” We visited with Alex Cheng, inventor of flies’ heads and of “old skin and tender meat” (crispy cubes of deep-fried egg tofu), and discovered that in fact many foreigners go straight for dishes with such provocative names and eat them with relish.
After oil is heated in a wok, minced pork is placed in it and stir-fried until a pleasant fragrance emerges. Next the chef adds fermented black soybeans in their own juices imported from Sichuan, along with Sichuan chili pepper, and broad-bean chili sauce. Once this has been stir-fried to bring out the aroma, salt and white pepper are added and the mixture is cooked further to slightly reduce the liquid. Finally chopped Chinese chives are added and the whole combination is stir-fried a little longer.
We watch as a chef at the Wang Cheng Laoma Szechwan Restaurant holds his breath and turns his ladle while he prepares “flies’ heads,” taking less than a minute for the whole process. The restaurant’s owner, Alex Cheng, emphasizes that if the chef didn’t hold his breath, he would choke on the hot gases coming off the wok.
These simple ingredients—minced pork, fermented black soybeans, chili peppers, and Chinese chives—can be made into a delicious dish with a crispy texture and an enchanting spicy fragrance.
Waves of Japanese and Korean customers
When the dish is served it gives off a pervasive appetizing fragrance, and the fermented black soybeans are sweet whereas the chives and minced pork are piquantly aromatic. This dish has been Wang Cheng Laoma’s number-one seller since Cheng invented it in 1988.
“Today when I see this dish, my whole head goes numb.” Despite Cheng’s self-deprecating humor, his tone reveals a sense of satisfaction. This is because flies’ heads has become a very common dish throughout Taiwan: It can even be found in backstreet self-service eateries, while breakfast shops offer packed rice balls with flies’ heads and Italian restaurants have flies’-heads pasta on the menu. Nvidia founder Jensen Huang likes to eat flies’ heads whenever he visits Taiwan, and his enthusiasm has further boosted the dish’s popularity.
The earliest wave of foreign travelers to enjoy this dish resulted from the example set by the late Japanese comedy actor Ken Shimura. Besides praising Wang Cheng Laoma’s flies’ heads, he also declared their egg fried rice with shredded pork to be the world’s second-best-tasting food, inspiring crowds of Japanese tourists to follow his lead and order these dishes. Many Korean travelers were likewise attracted to Taiwan to try flies’ heads following a 2023 blogpost about the dish.
The secret to making good “flies’ heads” is to stir-fry the mixture over high heat for one minute, producing a fragrant, spicy wok hei.
Creativity and ingenuity
This dish was in fact invented as a way to use up leftovers. Alex Cheng says that restaurant kitchens often discard the parts of kitchen ingredients that are trimmed off when preparing dishes. Instead, he chopped up some leftover offcuts of Chinese chives, added Sichuan fermented soybeans, minced pork, and broad-bean chili sauce and cooked these ingredients up together. Originally he intended it simply as food for the restaurant staff, but they praised it so highly that he immediately placed it on the menu, and it became an overnight sensation.
The green of the chives offsets the black of the soybeans, so that from a distance the plate appears to be covered in green-headed flies, hence the name. Though the name may be off-putting, it has long been a bestseller around Taiwan.
Meanwhile Cheng invented “old skin and tender meat” (crispy egg tofu) in 2000, when his egg vendor delivered a batch of eggs with cracked shells. Cheng steamed them and cut the mass into cubes, which he deep fried. Today the dish is made with "egg tofu" (similar to tender tofu, but made from egg instead of soybeans). With its crispy outside and tender inside, customers who ordered this dish jokingly accused each other of having “old skin and tender flesh” (the appearance of old age in a young person), making the dish a conversation piece.
It turns out that the boldly creative Cheng was formerly deputy editor-in-chief of Scoop Monthly Taiwan and editor-in-chief of Holiday magazine. After more than 20 years in the news business, it goes without saying that he is highly sensitive to current events and is skilled at writing headlines and thinking up slogans.
Since Alex Cheng invented flies’ heads in 1988, the dish has continually been the top-selling menu item at his Wang Cheng Laoma Szechwan Restaurant.
Still enthusiastic about the business
Cheng says that flies’ heads is not Sichuan cuisine, nor is it Taiwanese cuisine, but still tourists are drawn by its reputation. Foreigners are not used to eating white rice, he says, but when they order this food, it goes so well with rice that each diner consumes at least two bowls of it.
Moreover, this bizarre-sounding food has greatly boosted the restaurant’s beverage sales. Cheng reveals that foreign customers often quaff a mouthful of beer for each spoonful of flies’ heads, and they declare “what a great pairing!” They also say that while the name of the dish is unpleasant, it still tastes delicious.
On Wang Cheng Laoma’s foreign-language menus, “flies’ heads” is not translated literally. Alex Cheng’s son Cheng Han, who manages the restaurant, says that they translate it by naming the ingredients: “chopped Chinese leeks and minced pork with black beans and chili pepper.” As for the well-known Sichuan cold dish “husband-and-wife lung slices,” they also simply write the main ingredients (“sliced beef shank and tripe with chili pepper oil”) on the menu.
Cheng Han has one addendum to the theme of “dark” foods: “stir-fried chicken with dried chili pepper and Chinese spice,” a dish that merits three chili peppers on the menu to indicate its spiciness, and is often taken as a challenge by customers. Despite being warned beforehand that this food is “very hot,” aficionados of spicy food and travelers from Sichuan all say “we can take it,” but upon eating it, it often turns out that they can’t “take it.” Cheng says that they once had four Japanese customers who had come to Taiwan for work, one of whom fell to the floor after trying the dish, though the other three kept right on raising their glasses and drinking. Food like this that can knock customers over is perhaps the only genuinely “dark” cuisine!