Today’s foray into the culinary depths is not so much one particular restaurant, but an area which is dominated by one kind of food. The Nanshijiao area in Zhonghe is home to the Burmese community and what is called in Chinese “Myanmar Street”. Uninterestingly enough, my very first job in Taiwan was in Nanshijiao at a godforsaken cram school, and in those days, the area was devoid of pretty much anything. In recent years, it has come a long way and I’ve visited several Christmases in a row because Mrs. Bao’s friend bought a house there and she holds nice Christmas shindigs. On one of those occasions I infamously won the New Taipei City Firefighters calendar in Secret Santa, which was definitely a feast for the eyes for a certain audience.
For many years, the end of the orange MRT line was disconnected to anything so many Taipei people came to believe their counterparts in Zhonghe were somehow backwards and worshipped fire. As the first section of the Circle Line is now complete you can now go easily from the Capital of Culture (Dapinglin) to behind the Binlang Curtain (Jingan, one stop away from Nanshijiao) without having to trek into the city first. Which is a good thing for the people of Zhonghe, though I worry enlightenment is happening too quickly and their worship of the olde gods will soon be a thing of the past. What price progress, eh?
I brought Kenny Asbestos with me today, a friend that I sporadically get to see. I can see him several times in a month, then not see him again in the flesh for two years, then see him again several times in a two week period. My guess is nothing actually interesting has been happening; he’s probably just been sat on his arse playing games or watching TV.
Kenny works as a translator, and owes his entire career down to the fact that at school one day, he’d been messing around in class and had to go to a lunchtime detention. It was in another building, and it was raining so he couldn’t be bothered to attend and took refuge in another classroom where there was a meeting about a student exchange to Hong Kong. For whatever reason, our hero stuck around, applied for the program and by some twist of fate got on it- and thus learned Chinese.
Kenny had lost weight since I last saw him. Me too, apparently. Which is to say that according to him I had also lost weight, rather than Kenny being so threatened about women feeling empowered to speak out about harassment, that he lost weight. Nevertheless, he had heard about Little Burma before and had been curious. He also lives not too far away, so everyone wins.
We have to thank the all-seeing, all knowing Crispy Pete for pointing us in the direction of the restaurant we visited today. Crispy also pointed out that the restaurants in this area have very odd opening hours. It is not unusual to find them closed at 6pm, so a word to the wise- go mid afternoon. I know them as either no 26 Burma Street or whatever. A quick translation from Kenny told us our venue today 諾貝爾小吃店 translates as “Nobel” like the prize.
As you can tell from my hastily taken photo of what was on offer here, it is not anything special to look at. The only oddness for us at least (we see Chinese every day of our lives) was the Burmese script which both of us were not sure how it reads, is it left to right? Right to left? It has that same effect as when you first see Thai writing, or a black guy with a Scottish accent, your mind flips and just says “No information. No information”.
We ordered a lamb curry, this was because I rarely get to eat lamb in Taiwan, I can’t remember if I wrote this tit bit already, but local people have an issue with how lamb/mutton smells. As communal eating is the norm and we share meals, I can’t order lamb because Mrs. Bao can’t abide it. Also Kenny is from New Zealand, and they’d probably never let him back in if he didn’t. As always, we done good. Really good flavor, with a herb thing going on we couldn’t place, it was spicy with the potential to build, but didn’t. 140NT. We ordered a rice dish that had peanuts and small shrimp (actually we had wanted the more exotic rice with tea leaves- but they’d sold out) amazing stuff. The peanuts gave an unpredictable crunch to the rice that reads a bit strangely if I look back, but it really works (100NT). Even he liked it and he professed at the beginning that he doesn’t care for peanuts or their flavor.
We needed a bit of veg in there somewhere so we ordered a spicy salad that we were warned was medium level spicy. God help us if we ever experience what the guys in the restaurant consider “hot”.
Next came the scarily luminous drink that was advertised as “orchid” something. Being the avant-garde gents we jumped on that. This was a bit of a poser; it tasted like some sweets/candy from when we were kids, or a kind of ice cream that you had once but the past is cloudy. Really good, with the spiciness of everything.
We chatted about this, that and the other. Tuvalu was mentioned as was the heat which was at 37C this afternoon. As we were hanging around like bad smells, we also opted for some tamarind juice, an odd choice and not something I would choose to buy again, but wouldn’t refuse if offered.
As the afternoon wound down, I told him about my latest crackpot scheme to earn money, and we attempted to find the location of my first job in Taiwan but drew a blank. He swore he would be back on Burma Street again in the near future and out with me again on one of my restaurant shenanigans.
All in all, a cheap, worthwhile and sweaty experience- write your own damn punch line.
諾貝爾小吃店 48 Huaxin Street
Nearest MRT: Nanshijao exit 4 then a bit of a walk. When you start seeing Burmese script on shop fronts you are there.
I know I was going to write part 2 of Iranian special- but as I reported earlier, I found that place on the off chance and I had already arranged to meet Kenny for this a few weeks back. Plus, he had promised to have a window in his hectic schedule of playing online games and laughing at stuff.
52 Cuisines? 