Two Peck (Fried Chicken)

There's this chain store in Taiwan that is beyond incredible. It's called... Two Peck (hit the link if you want your mind blown in Chinese). The concept is simple. They have a full menu of food that food carts in Taiwan normally serve (french fries, sweet potato fries, taro fries, octopus legs, squid balls, onion rings, pigs blood) and they fry the crap out of it. If that doesn't sound awesome to you, well then... I bet you probably care about your health. For 40 NT (~$1.25) I got an order of 豬血糕 (fried pigs blood cake), which is really just pigs blood + sticky rice + batter meets fryer, and also an order of 花枝丸 (fried octopus balls).

The octopus balls I've had before on numerous occasions. They're basically paste made from octopus tentacles (occasionally with chunks of tentacle!) that gets mixed with fish paste and gets fried to a delicious golden hue. I know, the use of the word paste gets me going too. Anyway, these were as expected, crispy outer, surprisingly 'bouncy' inner, with a mild amount of seafood flavor to boot. Accompanied by a light drizzling of chili powder, the amount of flavor and heat inside your mouth is pretty indescribable.



As for the other thing I ordered. Fried pigs blood cake is a revelation upon an old time classic. Traditionally served in hot pot, these Lego sized bricks of black sticky rice would be cooked to an al dente texture, just a bit rubbery when bitten into, the frying gives for that same experience plus a crunchy outer layer. Not better or worse, but different. Good different. As far as the taste, it doesn't really taste like anything, so they put some sort of chili powder or plum powder on it for flavoring. It's something you mostly eat for the texture. Obviously I can't convince people that pigs blood cake isn't revolting, but I like it (and I know for a fact Koreans have something similar in soondae).

Oh, almost forgot... they serve fried chicken too... not the type the Colonel makes though, it's a single giant cutlet that they pound into a giant disk of chicken goodness.