TaipeiTravel Budget Guide

Founded in 1958 as a cooking-oil shop on Taipei's Xinyi Road, it turned to food in 1972 and made its eighteen-fold xiaolongbao famous across the world, the brand that carried Taiwanese cuisine abroad.

A century-old danzai noodle house from 1895 Tainan, famed for its meat sauce, shrimp broth and the red-lantern shoulder-pole it was first sold from, with a flagship on Taipei's Yongkang Street, an emblem of Taiwanese street food.

A Taiwanese tea drink born in the 1980s, milk tea mixed with chewy tapioca pearls, the Taiwanese beverage that swept the world.

Small steamed dumplings of thin dough holding pork and a sip of broth, the eighteen-fold style of Din Tai Fung world-famous, a must-try in Taipei.

Noodles in a rich beef broth with braised or stewed brisket, deeply flavoured with tender meat and springy noodles, the most iconic everyday noodle dish of Taipei and Taiwan.

A pan-fried snack of fresh oysters bound in sweet-potato starch batter, drizzled with sweet chilli sauce, chewy and briny, a signature of Taiwan's night markets.

A grilled sticky-rice sausage split open to hold a pork sausage and pickled relish, chewy without and savoury within, a creative staple of Taiwan's night markets.

Minced pork slow-braised in soy and spices ladled over white rice, deeply savoury, sweet and glossy, the most iconic everyday rice dish of Taiwan.

The only regional opera to take shape natively in Taiwan, growing from the Minnan gezai folk songs of Yilan and blending with folk song-and-dance, a nationally important traditional performing art.

The folk art of telling stories with hand-held puppets, made nationally famous in Taiwan by Huang Jun-xiong's golden-light and television puppetry, a nationally important traditional performing art.

The bright, robust percussion-and-winds music and opera of Taiwan's temple fairs, ringing out across the island for over two centuries, a nationally important traditional performing art.