THE GUA BAO HUNT

Led by our guide Jean, my food tour kicked off at Hulin Traditional Market – it would be impossible to eat at the city’s best spots without a guide and, unless you speak Taiwanese, you won’t understand what’s on offer. To begin, my group tried wax apples – a cross between an apple and a pear – and the sweetest, juiciest pineapple ever. With sticky chins, we moved on to a stall selling the much-loved thousand-layer spring onion pancake. Made of fried dough and onions speckled with sesame seeds, it’s a flaky, layered bread with a crisp exterior. We inhaled the hot slices, wrapped in napkins. Next, we stopped at an open-fronted shop where the cooking was happening a few steps up from the pavement – cold noodles in a peanut sauce, then a large chicken dumpling in a clear broth.

A break from the calories came in the form of a shop offering natural and legal highs. The betel nut is chewed to experience psychoactive side effects and was originally marketed to blue-collar workers, many of them drivers doing long hauls, as a pick-me-up. Until a decade ago it was common to see women in revealing outfits selling betel nuts from brightly lit roadside kiosks – so-called ‘betel nut beauties’. Today, the shops are still starkly lit, but on our visit it was an elderly man who served us. Not for me, though, as I wanted to keep my wits about me for the bao.

But first there were soup dumplings at KaoChi, then bubble tea and pineapple cake from the Wu Pao Chun bakery in the Eslite Spectrum Centre – where a sculpture park stands in the grounds of a converted tobacco factory.

Finally, the gua bao. Jean took us to her favourite outlet, the tiny Songshan Gua Bao, which has just six tables. We were handed our gua bao in sandwich bags, and the eating began. I devoured the cushions of dough, filled with pork belly and sweet soy sauce, preserved mustard greens and dusted with peanut powder. And I hadn’t even needed to queue.