[Taipei, Taiwan] Beef Noodles//牛肉麵

I can't imagine beginning this blog with any other food. For as long as I can remember, my one true love is beef noodle soup, or 牛肉麵. Our family used to always go to Green Village in Seattle's Chinatown. The broth was always so flavorful and beefy. There was only one downside to the noodles - they were not handmade. Before my grandma started making her own noodles at home, Green Village's beef noodles were my absolute favorite. I was spoiled by her freshly made noodles which had the perfect QQ texture. Nowadays, I am most likely to give a place a try only if they have hand made noodles. I have made a few exceptions, but I'm always sad when I drink the soup and ignore the noodles. As I learned from Tampopo, it's just not good if you can't eat everything in the bowl and slurp the soup to empty!

半筋半肉麵 is my favorite. Tender beef and tendons. I added the pickled veggies after I took the picture. Every good beef noodle joint should have really good pickled veggies that compliment the soup:


The interior:

This place was so hard to find that even my cousin gave up. We ended up hopping in a cab and having him drop us off. The cab ride was 80NT because we were so close. This place sometimes feels like a mirage. I'm normally pretty good with directions, but it definitely took me multiple tries before figuring out where it was without needing to use a map app of some sort. I wish I still had the address to this place. I'm sure if I'm away from Taipei long enough, I'll start to forget where it is all over again. My brother bought a food book in Taiwan (all in Chinese of course) and pointed it out.

There are so many places in Taipei, let alone the entire island of Taiwan that I can't imagine being able to try all of the places. A lot of inspiration came from A Hungry Girl's Blog though, so if you're looking for directions and ideas of places to try, use it! She's a fantastic resource!

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