To celebrate Mother’s Day, Tang Fulong, a chef hailing from Kaohsiung’s Neimen District, took it upon himself to cook food for 50 tables at the Fu­ding­jin Bao’an Temple beside Jinshi Lake in Sanmen District. In addition to a tuna slicing show, the guests were regaled with artisan delicacies such as platters of mullet roe and abalone, braised pork knuckle, and fruits laid out on three-tier stands, with dancers and musicians performing on the stage. Families and friends reunited with each other amid this jolly mood, reinforcing their bonds while chatting and pampering each ­other’s taste buds.

Even when a banquet is to be held in the evening, the team has to start preparing food before sunrise.

Taiwanese flavors

This event took place in the wake of a 200-table wedding feast that Tang had held for his son Tony in April 2023. The grandiose setups and elaborate foods on these occasions have sparked public interest in ­local pān-toh culture.

“We miss these traditional pān-toh dishes mainly because they have certain flavors and textures derived from ‘primitive’ cooking techniques.” What are these techniques? Tang, who has been cooking for streetside banquets for more than 30 years, tells us that chefs simply have to follow time-honored procedures, including frying food ingredients to release their oil and fragrance, and simmering over a low heat.

As a Taiwanese saying goes: “Doctors hate treating coughs [because there is no easy cure], and chefs hate cooking lunch [because they would be pressed for time].” Referring to a classic pān-toh stew made with seafood, pork, and vegetables, Tang explains that it takes four to five hours to cook fish and pork bones in broth with onions and other vegetables so as to bring out their rich flavors; other ingredients, such as mushrooms and flatfish, have to be fried before they are added to the stew. “This is a standard procedure that must be followed if we want to recreate that old-time flavor,’” Tang says.

This old-school approach is perfectly embodied in the traditional coda to pān-toh banquets. The culture of frugality used to impel guests to take away leftovers—such as hong-bah braised pork, chicken soup, and meatball soup—to cook up at home.

Huang Wanling, author of a book on Taiwan’s pān-toh culture, offers a different perspective. She tells us that in pre-1970s Taiwan, each streetside banquet would require the mobilization of an entire community. Hosts borrowed utensils, tables, and chairs from their neighbors and enlisted them to help prepare the food, including washing and cutting vegetables. Rather than being seen as leftovers, the coda stews were symbols of reciprocation, through which the hosts expressed gratitude to their neighbors, as well as to the assistant cooks and apprentices.

For those who wish to recreate these classic post-­banquet stews, Tang recommends using meatball soup as a base, blending in spring onion oil and the sauce used to make hong-bah braised pork, and then adding chicken, pork balls, prawns, dried scallops, pork ribs, daikon radish, and other ingredients to capture the essence of the sumptuous hodgepodge of flavors.

Pān-toh dishes: eel on sticky rice, stewed Silkie chicken, braised pork.

Social cohesion

Exactly how old is Taiwan’s pān-toh culture? Tseng Pin-tsang, an associate research fellow in the Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica, has waded through historical accounting records and journals and discovered that Taiwanese people were already hiring professional caterers for their banquets during the reign of Kangxi (1661–1722) in the Qing Dynasty.

Tseng divides these banquets into several categories, including rites of passage, reunions, religious rites, and dispute settlements. As a social event, the pān-toh helps cement and confirm interpersonal relationships or memorialize watershed moments in life. It is this ritualistic role that accounts for the long history of pān-toh culture and its continuing relevance today.

The pān-toh serves as a crucial means of promoting social cohesion and harmony. Tseng’s fieldwork reveals that banquets have been held to defuse antagonism and facilitate constructive dialogue, contributing to dispute resolution. As for religious rites, there are records of different social groups—Hokkien and Hakka, for example—interacting amicably with each other at banquets thrown by eminent locals responsible for organizing events to worship the gods.

Historical documents also show indigenous people coming down from the mountains to attend banquets held by ethnic Han hosts, or Taiwanese-born hosts inviting mainland Chinese immigrants to take part in religious feasts. Enabling mutual understanding, communication, and the expression of goodwill, the pān-toh epitomizes the process whereby “Taiwanese” identity takes shape through reconciliation and ­assimilation.

A row of steamers stacked three to five tiers high makes an impressive sight.

Craftsmanship

Elderly Taiwanese people who have lived through scarcity during their early years will find it hard to forget the vibrancy and lavishness of traditional streetside banquets.

Tseng observes that although there are banquets in every country, few would offer as many as 12–16 dishes, sometimes served from noon till evening. Taiwanese banquets are defined by their sumptuousness. For example, ngóo-liú-ki (a type of sweet and sour fish dish popular during the Japanese colonial era) is not a run-of-the-mill dish of deep-fried and braised fish. Rather, the fish is deep-fried whole and then garnished with shredded mushrooms, bamboo shoots, carrots, and chili peppers that have been stir-fried in advance. Thickening and seasoning come next, before sesame oil is drizzled on the fish to make it look shiny and festive.

Tang Fulong says that in earlier times, pān-toh chefs would braise pork without draining the grease first. Oozing, fatty meat used to be a favorite source of dietary fat; accordingly, hong-bah braised pork was one of the most popular banquet dishes. As modern epicures have become more health-conscious, chefs have changed the way they cook this classic dish: they now deep-fry the pork first to remove the grease. The process, however, requires tremendous skill. The meat has to be crispy outside but tender inside; if not handled correctly, the texture may easily turn out like pork jerky.

It takes four to five hours to make richly flavored broth for a thick soup.

Orchestration

“The way and the context in which a Taiwanese pān-toh banquet is orchestrated vary according to each occasion,” Tseng Pin-tsang says. Thus, he tells us, banquets that celebrate old age or the birthdays of deities usually begin with pork knuckle rice vermicelli, which symbolizes longevity.

On the other hand, those held to celebrate promotions and relocations or to mark the culmination of funerals start with whole chickens. The Taiwanese word for “chicken” sounds similar to that for “family,” so “whole chicken” signifies “entire family.”

Engagement and wedding banquets are even more ritualistic in nature. Some families observe the convention of serving fish at an engagement banquet. When fish is served, the family of the groom-to-be will take the hint and leave, without excusing themselves. Tradition has it that this practice symbolizes “leaving others some room,” the word for “fish” sounding similar in Taiwanese to that for “remaining” or “surplus.” Tang thinks that the image of fish “swimming here and there” is also relevant because the phrase sounds similar to a common expression denoting reciprocity: the “coming and going,” or “give and take,” between relatives. If this convention is to be followed, the chef will usually serve the fish dishes last, so that all the guests can eat their fill before having to leave.

Pān-toh dishes are sumptuously lavish. (photo by Kent Chuang)

Platters of cold food ready to be served.

Changing times

Tang recalls that Taiwan’s pān-toh culture reached its zenith in the 1970s and 1980s. Families were larger back then. A family of six to eight would send three to four members to attend a banquet. On average, a wedding banquet would comprise 50–100 tables. Pān-toh chefs often had to cater for more than 2,000 tables per month.

Prior to the passage of the new Election and Recall Act in 1980, electoral candidates would host banquets for their local campaigners and supporters at their campaign headquarters or constituency offices. There were usually more than 100 tables on these occasions. Temples, as the spiritual centers of their communities, would also organize continuous banquets to celebrate the birthdays of gods. Worshippers would pay for five to six tables of food and arrive at various times. The tables would be laid anew when a group of banqueters left to make way for other patrons.

Pān-toh chef Tang Fulong (standing, left) and his son Tony (standing, right) raise a toast to their guests to thank them for attending the banquet.

Modernization

Pān-toh chefs have to work long hours. Coupled with diminishing numbers of customers in recent decades, this has led to fewer youngsters opting for this line of culinary work. The longstanding culture of streetside banquets faces extinction. Tang is glad that his son Tony is willing to inherit his skills.

Tony Tang returned to his hometown eight years ago to take over the reins of his father’s business, and is helping him market pān-toh cuisine in innovative ways. He has developed traditional pān-toh dishes into popular products such as frozen foods, Lunar New Year dishes, sauces, and gift packs, selling these both online and in physical stores.

With new wedding venues, pilgrim hostels, and activity centers springing up, pān-toh banquets have moved indoors from streetsides, plazas and lawns. In addition to transporting his food ingredients in refrigerated vehicles, Tony Tang has improved his hardware, replacing plastic tablecloths with real fabric, bamboo chopsticks with metal, plastic tableware with ceramic, and red plastic stools with cloth-draped folding chairs. He even has Lazy Susans made in glass. His younger customers can now take pleasure in a greater variety of pān-toh cuisine, without feeling embarrassed at the unsophisticated ambience.

As Tseng Pin-tsang says, by indulging guests with an exuberance of scrumptious foods that carry symbolic meanings, pān-toh banquets embody the warmth and generosity of their hosts. This is Taiwanese hospitality in its most authentic form.

Families and friends reinforce their bonds by dining together on festive occasions.