[Kaohsiung, Taiwan] - 田記豆漿/Tián jì dòujiāng
One of my greatest pleasures in life while in Taiwan is breakfast. Yes, I know you can get a lot of it in LA or San Jose or scattered around San Francisco/San Mateo, but it really can't compare to the way it's prepared and the way it tastes in Taiwan. So while my first stop generally is in Taipei, I am trying to reacquaint myself with a lot of the good places in the South. While it's my first time to 田記, I looked through a ton of blogs and reviews on Foursquare to pick it to try.
In case you didn't know, the foods in the South tend to be on the sweeter side. Growing up, I didn't realize it because I didn't go to Taipei. After living in the North and re-visiting the South, I can see that there is a pretty big sweetness difference in the food. Case in point, the salty soy milk at 田記. It's actually very sweet for a salty soy milk. It's not bad at all, but I was not prepared. I ended up adding more vinegar and chili to mine and still found it enjoyable. Compared to Yonghe Doujiang Dawang, there is less stuff added so it's more of a drinking soy. On the plus though, the soy is richer.
Since we were pretty hungry, we grabbed whatever that was left that still looked good (I recommend going much earlier than we did - we got there around 10:30am), and also ordered some soup dumplings for some meat. The soup dumplings were good. I wasn't expecting them to be amazing, but it was a good meat to skin ratio and helped fill me up. With the extra onion pancakes, I don't know that I actually needed the soup dumplings though. I do plan on going back again next time and getting there earlier when everything is still extra hot and fresh.
Salty soy milk/鹽豆漿
Our spread
Soup Dumplings/小籠包
All the goodies - onion pancakes, red bean pancakes, and pot stickers.
Front of the building
Menu on the wall, but you can grab most of the items from the right of the column pictured. In the morning you'll see the line. If you go later in the day, most of it will be gone and it won't be hot and fresh.
Address:
No. 75之3號, Xinyue Street
Yancheng District
Kaohsiung City, Taiwan 803