You can find beef noodles and potstickers on every corner in Taipei, but if you're looking for a more specialized sampling of northern cuisine, head to the corner of Yitong Street and Songjiang Road's Lane 123.
There you'll find Zhong Fu Yuan, a 22-year-old establishment offering a selection northern (or, more specifically, northeastern) Chinese dishes. The restaurant specializes in something that never gets old -- wrapping stuff up and eating it with your hands. The key element of this process is the jin bing (
The jin bing are made in an area at the front of the restaurant surrounded by windows so you can observe the process. A ball of dough, dripping with vegetable oil, is pulled into a long snake and coiled around into a pile, then rolled flat and plopped on a greasy griddle. Once cooked, the jin bing is slapped around a bit to make it fluffier.
PHOTO: MEREDITH DODGE, TAIPEI TIMES
"Pretty much anything on our menu can be wrapped up in a jin bing," said Chang Kuchiang (章可強), one of Zhong Fu Yuan's managers. It's like the northerner's answer to white rice -- it goes with every dish. Two of the favorite things to put inside a jin bing, however, are shredded pork (or beef) stir-fried in sweet bean sauce (京醬肉絲) and vegetables covered with an egg blanket (合菜代瑁), containing mostly been sprouts.
Some other menu highlights are the beef soup, a savory broth with chunks of meet in the bottom, and the shredded chicken with lapi (
With its selection of hard-to-find, traditional northern dishes, you'd think Zhong Fu Yuan would be run by a family from northern Chinese city. The restaurant's founder, Liu Xiu-xiong (
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