By Danny Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan– When British cookbook author and international
foodie Marlena Spieler flew to Taiwan recently for a four-day visit at
the invitation of the government tourist bureau, she immediately fell
in love with Taipei, its people and its delicious foods. Spieler is
the veteran author of over 50 food and travel books, including the
ever-popular “Jewish Heritage Cookbook.”
Her first visit to Taiwan made a huge impact on her, as it does on many
Westerners visiting this colorful and tasty island nation for the first time.
“It hits you when you first arrive,” she told me in an email when she
had returned to Britain. “The excitement of deliciousness is in the
air, and literally it seems to be: everywhere your nose takes you,
there is the smell of temptation: grilling, roasting, baking, stewing,
frying — fragant smells coming from shops, cafes, street nosh, all
right there, irrisistible and exciting.”
Spieler said that not only was she excited about being in Taiwan for
the first time, but she noted that even local people seemed excited
not only about their own food dishes, but also what foreigners might
think of their dishes.
“Enjoy the pickled vegetables at a restaurant and the chef might just
come out with a container of pickles for you
to take back home to your own country, and I did, munching them all
the way back, with enough leftover to share with my British buddies.”
There is such a variety of food dishes served up in Taiwan that
Spieler said she found herself in Seventh Heaven at times.
“Shaved ice cafes were everywhere, with kids, teens, families,
everyone, spooning into crisp snowy mounds piled with syrups, candied
fruits, topped with fluffy ice cream like swirls,” she recalled.
As a food expert with over 50 cookbooks to her name, Spieler noted
that Taiwan is a small island nation with an amazingly rich variety of
eating traditions.
“Indigenous tribes were the first residents, their presence and
influence is still strong,” she said. “Around the 15th century,
immigrants from China began to come; first from Fujian — Hakka people
(sometimes dubbed the Jews of Asia) — and this layer of taste is a
strong part of modern Taiwanese food. Next came Portuguese sailors,
giving the island a name, isla ‘Formosa’ which remained its name until
fairly recently. Then came colonizations of Dutch, Spanish and
Japanese. each adding layers to the cuisine of the island, especially
the Japanese who brought among other tastes, the taste for raw fish.”
“In 1949, at the end of the Chinese civil war, Chiang Kai-shek fled
with about two million compatriots and the defeated KMT and its
Chinese Nationalist army,” Spieler told me, giving me a culinary
history lesson. “Many of China’s top chefs fled to Taiwan as well —
the new communist regime of Mao didn’t have a place for such luxury.
During the following turbulent years in Communist China, Taiwan was
the upholder of Chinese traditional cuisine, keeping alive the
traditions and tastes that had dissappeared in China.
As a result, Spieler says, this melting pot of regional Chinese
cuisines thus became an intrinsic part of Taiwan/Taipei food.
Her time in Taipei was such a happy one that she says she can’t wait to return.
“There are elegant fine dining experiences in Taipei, and dumplings
awaiting you at every turn,” she recalled. “In addition, night markets
filled with the exotic, and the just plain delicious such as a flat
spicy fried chicken breast to woo the heart of this not crazy about
fried foods gal. I ate at a rice farm high up on a hillside on the outskirts of Taipei,
and sipped tea–blissful, spiritually– in a tea house on the docks.”
“And I can’t wait to go back,” she said. adding: “Sometimes a place
calls to you all of your life and you finally get to visit — if
you’re lucky it becomes part of your life, a touchstone to revisit for
a reality check. other times its so amazing you never leave.”
”I carry my new found love for Taiwan with me now, plotting ways to
return,” this well-travelled cookbook author added.’
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Bloom is Taiwan bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World and an inveterate web surfer. He may be contacted at dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com