A New Generation of Chefs Reframes Taiwanese Cuisine in America

Picking up the noodles using only one chopstick is really hilarious. At least don't put it as the cover photo. Please.

Dear NYT, the terms of "taro" and "sweet potato" means exactly the opposite of what you wrote. "Sweet potato" refers to those whose family has been in Taiwan for generations and "taro" refers to the recent (esp. 1949) immigrant/refugees from China and maybe their descendants. The terms, may I stress, have NEVER been reversed. It was, and remains, a mistake in your article despite the correction.

I am from India. Judging from the articles about Indian or Indian-inspired food in the NYT and other such rags now under the pressures of a 24-hour-news-cycle and needing to push out click bait, I have stopped coming to expect any in-depth research or authenticity from articles like this one. (Same goes for hastily written science and economics articles. Also those silly "How to spend a day off" types of articles from twenty-something "experts" churning them out on a per word basis -- sad!). Articles like this are a conglomeration of stuff people have yammered about to the author on the chosen subject, while (s)he gobbled up some food, made some calls, scrolled around on social media looking for keywords and then strung together in an effort to have it all make sense and get it published.

I’m surprised Little Fatty on the Westside of Los Angeles didn’t make an appearance in this article.

Except for the 50 years of Japanese possession, the Island of Taiwan or Formosa was for centuries a province of China. As such, the Taiwanese is cuisine is one of the Chinese. But I am puzzled by the photographic faux pas of showing the noodles picked up on only one chopstick. A next photo might have shown where this leads to in an attempt to transfer the noddles to the moth. :-))

The lines "She attributes that to growing up in Bakersfield, Calif." and "She is also a native Angeleno" are mutually exclusive (much more so than being both Taiwanese and Chinese, speaking from personal experience). Small but obvious mistakes like this undermine an otherwise interesting article.

Re the top photo: does Richard know you're allowed to use two chopsticks?

Of course Taiwan food is part of "Chinese food." It cannot be "Italian," "Jewish," or "German food." China's more than 2,500 regional and local dialects are "Chinese dialects" though they are mostly unintelligible to one another. Don't commodity or "brandify" your stomach. Eat what you like. The picture looks yummy to me as a perfect Taiwanese beef noodle soup. I'll eat it whether or not politically I "like" Taiwan, Hong Kong or China. If you like it, eat it. No stomach branding and politicking.

This is to echo @Daisy Jane---a `taro' is one who retreated to Taiwan with the KMT; a `sweet potato' is one who has been in Taiwan for generations when the KMT came to Taiwan. Please correct the article.

I want my oyster pancake! After four years in San Diego still looking. Guess I'll have to wait for the next trip back to Tainan.

Glad to see a thoughtful article on Taiwan cuisine. Some slightly different or orthogonal views I'll add. Taiwan food has always been well-known and in its own category in LA, especially the San Gabriel Valley. It used to be quite prevalent in the West SGV towns of Monterey Park (known as Little Taipei in the 80's), Alhambra, San Gabriel, and Rosemead. The cuisine has migrated east, first to Arcadia, then to Rowland Heights, Hacienda Heights, and even further, reflecting the greater demographic shift. There's a distinct subset of "juan cun" (眷村) cooking in Taiwan food. A juan cun is a village built to house the families of soldiers of the ROC who fled the mainland after 1949. While the politically sensitive may argue how genuinely "Taiwanese" a juan cun is, the reality is it exists only in Taiwan. The food very much reflect the fusion nature of Taiwan food. My own definition of Taiwan cuisine has the requirement that it begins with humble, locally abundant ingredients (eg, pig innards, cheap shellfish, and mountain greens) and makes them palatable through shrewd preparation and seasoning. Thus I would not consider the beef noodle soup as the national dish. For beef is expensive and traditionally one does not eat cattle, who are often beloved working animals. My vote is for the slack season noodle, aka danzi noodle.

Taipei, like New York, is also a city that never sleeps (except for an hour after lunch). But what New York cannot reproduce is the flavor of a subtropical paradise. Setting is an ingredient of Taiwanese food -- no matter how perfectly you grill that octopus on a stick, it will never taste as good as from a street vendor in Yilan on a warm sunny day under the bluest of skies.

I spent my 20s living in Honolulu enjoying food from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and from different provinces in mainland China. The flavors, the restaurant made noodles, the different meat and vegetable choices made the experience, to say the least, exotic. But for me, as a young college man, the food became my nutritious norm, the every day. Today, in my 60s, I seek a different diet. I don't see enough in this article anything about vegan choices. It would be immensely satisfying to experience Chinese food without the meat - the flavors, the aromas, the textures, and no meat. I know it's not for everyone, but I wonder if that is even possible for some of us?

With all the rhetoric of trade issues/ tariffs, treatment of minorities in XinJiang, protests in Hong Kong and South China Sea brinksmanship it makes total sense to brand one’s restaurant as Taiwanese rather than Chinese.

The only way these restaurants can be authentic is if their AA Ts'ai is grown by a neighborhood gardener, preferably along the banks of the Hudson.

There's no conflict between Taiwanese American chefs branding their cuisine as Taiwanese, and the cuisine still being under the 'vast umbrella of "Chinese food."' How could there be a conflict when the Taiwanese national dish, beef noodle soup, is of Chinese Muslim origin? The origin doesn't make the dish any less Taiwanese, but the Taiwanese style of the dish doesn't make the Chinese Muslim origin disappear either.

Can anyone recommend a restaurant that has good 燒餅 (shao bing) for 燒餅油條 (shao bing you tiao) in NYC? That is what my family misses the most from Taiwan.

Thank you for an excellent and informative article. I enjoy it when food writers break down the variants of a major cuisine. I also love all the quibbling here in the comments about authenticity, family recipes, and, most amusingly, the notion that Taiwan is not an independent country. Reading today's headlines about Hong Kong, it is any wonder the Taiwanese want to have nothing to do with the oppressive totalitarianism of the Chinese Communists? China jails journalists, jails religious minorities, and jails people who want the right of free speech and assembly. If I were a Taiwan resident, I'd also want to have nothing to do with the fascists in China. And, I'd be proud of the history and flavors of my Taiwanese cuisine. Addressing one objection in the comments, whether or not there is such a thing as "Taiwanese food," I stand with those who vote "yes" there most certainly is. Just as there is Szechuan food, Cantonese food, or Mandarin food, there is Taiwanese food. Saying there isn't is the same as lumping all Italian dishes under one umbrella. Italy wasn't even a unified nation until 1861. Before that, there was regional cuisine, which is still the best way to eat and label dishes from Italy. The variation of unique recipes from Tuscany to Puglia, from Liguria to Sicily, from Lazio to Campagna is bountiful and deservedly celebrated. Just as with Taiwan's regional dishes, which are different from "Chinese" food.

As any native New Yorker knows, Chinese food is one of our fundamental food groups. So, as an expatriate New Yorker now living in the Saint Louis area, finding quality "Chinese food" has been a bit challenging. However, I did discover a new Taiwanese place, Tai Ke, in STL and, there, I learned that there is a difference between most "Americanized Chinese food" and Taiwanese. I knew that I was in for a treat because the place was filled with local Chinese/Taiwanese families eating. So, for me, this has become my oasis in a veritable near desert of quality Chinese food in Red State America.

The vast majority of modern day Taiwanese food originates from China. They were recipes taken from China when the KMT fled to Taiwan. Beef Noodle Soup, Lu Rou Fan, Tomato and Egg, all of these dishes have deep roots in China. It is as if I were to credit the U.S. with the creation of sushi just because I ate at a nice sushi restaurant in New York... True Taiwanese food would be the food of the Taiwanese aborigines. It makes perfect sense to cast modern day Taiwanese food under the umbrella of "Chinese food" as it essentially is Chinese food.

An article on Taiwanese food that doesn't mention stinky tofu?? It is everywhere over there. True, like most of the other dishes mentioned here it was brought from the mainland and adapted, but it is an important part of the cuisine. But I'm *really* surprised to read an article about Taiwanese food in New York that does not mention Flushing. This is due to the usual Manhattan/parts of Brooklyn bias of the Times, but Flushing is the center of Chinese cuisine in NYC and has had a strong Taiwanese population since at least the 70's if not earlier. There are plenty of Taiwanese restaurants there, and not just in the past 10 years. The Times does a disservice to its readers by continuing to ignore the best place to find many different regional Chinese cuisines in NYC. Usually at a far lower price than the places in Manhattan. I lived in Taiwan more than 30 years ago, and when I returned to the US and then the EU I really missed Taiwanese food. Occasionally I'd get lucky and find a restaurant whose owners were Taiwanese, and ask them to feed my their own cuisine. But this has not been a problem since I moved to NY 20 years ago.

I grew up eating this kind of food with a bit minor variation. I thought it was always called Chinese food. Since when it was changed to Taiwanese food? If you eat a McDonald's cheese hamburger in Shanghai, it is still called a hamburger. It may have a bit local flavor, but you don't call it a Chinese burger or Chinese cheese bun.

please make a correction- sweet potato is the term for native Taiwanese while taro is used to describe the refugee Chinese came after the civil war. this is only for historical reference for the new generation if Taiwanese today identify themselves as Taiwanese! thank you!

...and of course Taipei Cafe and Hello Jasmine in Chicago. I’m always amazed at how frequently Chicago is completely ignored whenever the NYT does a roundup like this, whether it be Taiwan, Kerala, Jalisco, Xi’an, Chiang Mai the Yucatán etc. Please just ask me next time.

You should use a photo where the person eating knows how to properly use chopsticks.

Taiwanese beef noodle in the cover originates from Northern China. But NYT says Taiwanese food under the vast umbrella of Chinese food? Excuse me? Can I say that the real beef noodle is under the vast umbrella of the island?

Win Son is considered a Tawainese American restaurant, not Taiwainese. This distinction is clear to any Taiwanese that eats there and is actually reflected in the restaurants signage. Don’t go there expecting tastes of home.

My father was a chef in Taiwan. I grew up watching him cooking different Taiwanese food and making up new names for new dishes. If he's still alive, I would translate this article for him to let him know that Taiwanese food is recognized internationally. I can just picture his smile! This warms my heart! Thank you!

I'm so glad Taiwanese food is finally being recognized! The food is so delicious and so complex. Thank you Julia for writing this article. I highly recommend for you to try Yumpling - it's a wildly successful food truck in the city. Best Taiwanese food in town hands down.

Best I have ever been able to find out, three cup chicken (sanbeiji) is originally from Jiangxi province, not Fujian or Taiwan, though of course it’s very popular in Taiwan, and a separate style has emerged there.

The writer says: "If you asked the question elsewhere in Asia, Taiwan would be cited alongside Hong Kong and Singapore as a prime destination for xiao chi, 'small food' from street stalls..." Aficionados might add Penang in Malaysia. Indeed, some of the dishes from Taiwan actually do find echoes in Southeast Asia, particularly in Penang and Singapore.

You should credit the restaurants in the captions of the food and not just describe the food.

There is a mistake in this article. Taro = Newer comers Sweet Potato/Yam = Existing Taiwanese Reason is. Taiwan is shaped like a yam. Also we had to put yam in everything for starch during Japanese occupation, because the Japanese took all the rice. This is also why Taiwanese food tends to be very starchy. Yam starch fills you up fast. 老芋仔 or Taro refers to the soldiers that came to Taiwan with KMT when they fled from communists. Most of them became high ranking officers. The saying is that they now get to live a chill live and retire planting taro in Taiwan from the retire benefit of a senior officer.

We are lucky in Reno, Nevada to have more than one Taiwanese restaurant. Taiwan 101 is the one my wife and I regularly patronize. Authentic Taiwanese dishes that take me back to when I lived in Taiwan. Yum!

Also try Lao Tao in the Chinatown District of Los Angeles for fast casual Taiwanese that is consistent and affordable. There are certainly others in the city but for quick, tasty, and reliable rice bowls I always look there.

So glad to see Taiwanese food getting some attention. When I moved back to the States was so hard tracking it down in my city. Now if we could import the street food......

I was originally born in Taipei Taiwan and I didn't return until after college. The street food there is delicious. I ate so many different things that I had never tried because I had grown up stateside. I am a "Taro" as my parents came over during the Revolution. I hear that there is a lot of resentment between the natives and the mainlanders. That's said even to this day. That was an unfortunate event that took place 70 years ago. We need to move on....live and forgive......

According to my parents, who emigrated from Taiwan to NY, a "sweet potato" is someone whose family has been in Taiwan for many many generations (before 1949). A "taro" is someone whose family moved to Taiwan after 1949. This article seems to reverse these two.

A couple of these restaurants are better than a few others.