(Long overdue post! We went to Tainan back in October 2023 but just now decided to blog about it. 😅)

Tainan is Taiwan’s old capital, and one of Taiwanese people’s favorite vacation spots due to its delicious traditional food and historic architecture. We decided to travel there during Taiwan’s Double Ten Holiday 雙十節, when the boys had a 4 day weekend.

We took Taiwan’s high-speed rail which was super convenient, clean and efficient. After booking our tickets online, we printed them at 7-11. On the day of departure, we took the MRT to Taipei Main Station, which is connected to the high-speed rail. Within 2 hours, we arrived in Tainan!

We stayed in the West Central District of Tainan in a quaint Airbnb located on top of a café. We literally had to walk through the café, go up the stairs to the attic to get to our Airbnb! It was an unusual place to stay but the location was great. A lot of people warned us that we’d need to rent a car to get around, but we never felt the need to because our Airbnb was so central.

Tainan is famous for traditional Taiwanese food, so let’s first talk about the food! As soon as we arrived in Tainan, we hit up several restaurants.

(From left to right, top to bottom)
Danzai Noodles 擔仔麵: This is a popular snack in Tainan that’s made with wheat noodles in shrimp broth, garlic and topped with marinated pork. The portion is tiny, so it’s more a snack than a meal. It was delicious and we gobbled both portions up!

Fish Soup and Fried Pork Over Rice: After eating 擔仔麵, we came across this simple restaurant owned by a sweet old lady. We ordered a fish soup and fried pork over rice. Both were so simple, yet packed with flavor. It was so good that we ordered a second plate of the fried pork over rice!

Grass Jelly with Taro and Sweet Potato Balls: Baba and the boys love this dessert. Personally, I’m not a big fan of the glutinous texture and mild taste but it’s very popular across Taiwan.

Peanut Shaved Ice 花生刨冰: We noticed a shop selling different kinds of 刨冰, but their most famous was peanut! We grabbed a cup and it was the perfect not-too-sweet and refreshing dessert on a hot night.

The next morning, we had a traditional Tainan breakfast of milkfish congee and braised pork rice 滷肉飯. I’m a huge congee lover, and was really looking forward to eating my favorite comfort food here. But the milkfish was thick and dry, and the rice was not as creamy as I’d like. I still prefer Cantonese style congee.

Later on, we took a long walk to get in line at Wen Zhang 文章牛肉湯, a famous restaurant known for a Tainan staple: beef soup 牛肉湯! We waited in line for 30-40 minutes in the heat, but it was worth it. The soup is very simple – literally beef broth with thin slices of beef – but it’s amazingly flavorful, clean, and comforting, like something your mom or grandma made. Apparently many people in Tainan have this soup for breakfast!

Eel noodles is also a common dish you’ll find in Tainan. We went to a popular hole-in-the-wall restaurant called A Jiang 阿江鱔魚意麵 to try this dish.

They basically have two options: one that’s dry-fried and one with sauce. We ordered both. Visually, these are not the prettiest looking dishes. 😂 But the smoky flavor and wok-hay were amazing. The eel was firm – even a bit crunchy – and marinated well. Personally, I preferred the dry-fried version.

Then, we hopped next door to get another bowl of beef noodle soup and ginger scallion fried beef. The beef soup was not as good as the one we had at Wen Zhang 文章, but it was still good! The ginger scallion beef was delicious – the beef was so tender and flavorful. People in Tainan really know how to cook beef!

The next morning, we had another typical breakfast item in Tainan – sticky rice dumplings 粽子! I thought this was pretty heavy to have for breakfast, but since breakfast is the most important meal for Tainan people, maybe they want something hearty?

We had lunch reservations at A Sha Restaurant 阿霞飯店, which is one of the most famous restaurants in Tainan serving traditional Taiwanese dishes. This is a restaurant that requires reservations and we were lucky we could snag one before we went back to Taipei.

The lunch at A Sha was our priciest meal (about $100 USD), but honestly, it was a little underwhelming. Don’t get me wrong – everything was decent but at that price, I was expecting something more memorable, especially since food is so cheap in Tainan.

Aside from food, Tainan is also famous for its historic buildings and architecture. Here are some places we visited:

Confucius Temple: You could pay extra to go inside other buildings at the temple, but we only walked around the public areas which was more than enough for us to explore!

Anping Old Street: The oldest street in Taiwan, filled with alleys of food stalls and shops. It was fun navigating through the alleyways spotting interesting things to try.

Anping Tree House: Probably my favorite site in Tainan. This was an old Japanese salt warehouse but after 100 years of transformation, the place is now covered in banyan roots. We loved the mystique of the tree house, and it reminded us of Angkor Wat in Cambodia!

Temples: There are beautiful temples big and small sprinkled across Tainan. It was fun to get a glimpse of old Tainan on every street we turned into.

Tainan makes a great weekend trip! It has a more chill, more laid-back vibe than Taipei, with friendly locals, interesting history, and delicious, cheap food.