Flavors passed on for a century
When talking about the flavors of Taiwan, you have to mention Tainan, which has 400 years of history. When we ask Kyle Hsieh, born and bred in Tainan and the owner of the Old House Inn, how people in Tainan show their hospitality, he points to food: “If it’s an old-established restaurant, the tableware used to serve the food must be ceramic; that’s very important. Meanwhile, the iced lotus-root tea just has to be served in a glass, because the cold makes droplets condense on the surface of the glass, and the cool touch of the glass on your lips, along with the smooth slide of the tea down your throat, feel entirely different from what you get using a plastic cup.”
There is also a lot of customization to cater to individual customers’ needs. For example, when ordering a bowl of minced pork on rice, you can ask the owner to make it less fat, to add a little more juice, to use more lean meat, to make the taste lighter, to have just half a bowl of rice, and so on.
Tainan people are also extremely fastidious about the quality of ingredients in their food. For example, visitors to Huang’s Shrimp Restaurant, located in Tainan’s West Central District, will sometimes find the shutters rolled down and a sign hanging out that says, “No shrimp to sell.” Kyle Hsieh explains that this does not mean that the restaurant has sold out of shrimp, but rather that the owner couldn’t find shrimp of sufficient quality that day, so he simply didn’t open the shop. This, says Hsieh, is part of the insistence on “good service” in Tainan.
Switching topics, Hsieh mentions the emphasis Tainan people place on sentiment. “Tainan is an old city, so people value attachment.” Because Tainan developed relatively early on, many shops here have already been passed on to the third or fourth generation. It is no easy feat for a family firm to successfully pass the baton time after time.
“It’s all about ‘upholding a tradition,’ and not simply ‘flavor.’” Thinking back to the time when these old shops started up, Taiwan was not yet wealthy and restaurant owners depended on small transactions, selling their food one bowl at a time. Some of them gritted their teeth and gradually saved up the money to send their children abroad for their education, always hoping that the next generation would have it easier than they did. But there were others who wanted to preserve these flavors unique to Tainan, and worked hard to communicate with the next generation and smooth the way for them to take over.
Also, many small eateries in Tainan only close for one or two days at the Lunar New Year holiday, when most people take at least five days off. It turns out that they do it for the sake of their faithful old customers, many of whom have gone abroad for study or work and can only come back at the New Year. This kind of sentimental attachment between owner and customer is very touching.
Shin Yeh Dining worked with Hsu Zong to devise set meals named “Around the Island” and “Taipei Taipei.” Behind every dish in these culinary journeys around Taiwan is a story related to Taiwan’s seasons, land, and culture.