MOAR FOOD FROM 淡水 (part 1)

True to my lazy character, I'm going to condense all the remaining food I got from 淡水 (Dan Shui) into one giant post, heavy on the pictures. So first up to cleanse the palette of any remnant tastes, I went to a place that basically translates to 'Mom's prune/plum juice.' No that string of words isn't likely to illicit any response of 'Mmmm... delicious,' but it is. I think plum juice (seriously, I think they mean prune) gets a bad rap as a sour drink that make your grandmother's bowel movements seem normal. In all seriousness, this isn't the same stuff you're thinking of. Yes it is sour, but they add enough sugar to give a person diabetes, no... it won't have you running to the bathroom like you're older than sin, and on a day where it's 34 degrees Celsius, it can quench thirst wayyyy better than a big gulp from 7-11... I don't care how cheap it is for 2 extra larges (on second thought... maybe not).


The cup is kind of cute I suppose. I found it confusing when they spelled it 'A-mam's plum juice.' Chinese people kind of fail at phonetic sounds I guess. That's not even close to what it sounds like in Taiwanese. Whatever, when something's this good (and cheap! 25 NT!) it doesn't really matter what you call it. I'll still drink it.


We went somewhere else (the name eludes me) that was supposed to be real famous. I'm really useless huh? Anyway, I made my grandmother order pork buns. Nothing special here, but they were 25 NT (60 cents) for the 2 of them. Think about that for a second. If you had $20... you could get more than 60 of them. Yeah. Pork bun eat off... if anyone wants in on this action, shoot me an email with a time and I will destroy you.


I like Fuzhou style fish balls like this. Fish paste molded into a pocket that holds a small round ball of ground pork. Mmmmm, that's 2 different kinds of animals I get to eat at once. Incredible right? In any case, these were cheap, but nothing to write home about. Kind of disappointing since Dan Shui is a fisherman's wharf and supposedly famous for their seafood.


I forget the name of this. It's famous though. If someone could help me identify it, that'd be terrific. Basically you have a fried tofu puff that gets filled with vermicelli and ground pork. The entire dish is drenched in sauce that tastes somewhat similar to the sauce on tempura. Slightly sweet and tangy, with only a slight hint of salty flavor. My impression... was that it wasn't all that flavorful. Cooking the tofu in water keeps it puffy and soft, but the runoff dilutes the sauce too much. Furthermore, the vermicelli doesn't hold the flavor of the meat well, so you find yourself enjoying only the portion of bites where you end up with pork. Points for presentation and creativity, but failure in execution. Maybe this shop just failed horribly (good thing I don't remember the name or I could tarnish their reputation for good!). That last line is written as a joke, I don't think the 40 people who read this will ever go, or take my opinion as fact haha.

Anyhoo, this post is getting long... I'll finish this in a second post soon. I might post a picture of a 18" ice cream cone I got. I'm debating that one since I had just shaved my head and I look retarded.