Taiwan’s culinary offerings tell a delicious tale of the nation’s history. A single meal can encompass at least 500 years of development across the earliest Aboriginal communities, the profound changes of Qing Dynasty rule and the influences of Japanese colonialism.
Hakka food, which entered this mix during the Qing era, is a distinctive category arising from the migratory history and living conditions of the Hakka people, who now number about 4.5 million, or nearly one-fifth of Taiwan’s population.
Despite being the second-largest ethnic group in the country, it’s only in recent years that Hakka food and culture have been enjoying a popular revival. Cultural festivals and Hakka-themed travel destinations are on the rise. The government plans to turn Provincial Highway 3 into a “Hakka Romantic Avenue.” Perhaps most crucially, Hakka was made an official national language in 2017, strengthening prospects for a more robust cultural identity.
Photo: Davina Tham, Taipei Times
While Hakka populations are concentrated in central and southern Taiwan, Taipei-dwellers hunting for a taste have many choices. They include swanky Tung Hakka, also known as Blossom Restaurant (桐花), which has two locations here, and Gan’s Huofang (甘家伙房) inside the city’s Hakka Cultural Park.
The cuisine has even made inroads into the trendy private kitchen format. Husband-and-wife duo Fuchidon (夫妻檔客家料理私房) serve up refined Hakka feasts recreated from their parents’ recipes, although you’ll need a group of at least eight to secure a booking.
On any given night, the tables at May Snow Hakka Food (五月雪客家私房珍釀) in Daan District (大安) are filled with drinking buddies and silver-haired gatherings seeking a hearty and reliable dinner. The homely restaurant, founded in 2010, made its way into the Michelin Guide earlier this year.
Photo: Davina Tham, Taipei Times
The common image of Hakka food is that of oil-slicked and heavily-salted dishes. Though unhealthy by contemporary standards, in earlier periods, these qualities were necessary to keep workers replenished with enough energy and minerals to perform hard labor. Other characteristics include the incorporation of rice in many guises, preservation by salting and drying and the judicious “nose-to-tail” use of precious lifestock.
May Snow prides itself on much lighter versions of Hakka dishes, and when I visited, that proved largely true while not sacrificing on quality.
The backbone of Hakka cuisine is formed along eight dishes known as the “four braises and four stir-fries” (四炆四炒), five of which feature on May Snow’s menu. Of the four braises, there is pork tripe with preserved vegetables (NT$200) and pork belly (NT$360). The most well-known wok dish is the Hakka stir-fry (客家小炒, NT$250) combining pork strips, dried squid and tofu. The restaurant also serves pig’s intestines with shredded ginger (NT$230) and black fungus with pineapple (NT$190).
Photo: Davina Tham, Taipei Times
These may be the classics, but the restaurant’s signatures and innovation lie elsewhere, so we order a generous set meal for two (NT$1080) to sample a wider range of offerings.
A trio of appetizers arrives: perilla and plum-pickled cherry tomatoes and an elegant tower of the fern-like white water snowflake topped with tartar sauce and fish roe. The most intriguing, however, are the ghostly handkerchiefs of tasteless konnyaku coconut jelly served with a dab of wasabi, which are an excellent if unusual palate cleanser.
The rice noodle hotpot is brimming with soft pumpkin and taro, chewy meatballs and fish slices swimming in a sweet and delicate fish broth. The noodles are the best part, thick as spaghetti and retaining a firm but slippery bite.
Photos: Davina Tham, Taipei Times
That seems to confirm the special place of rice in Hakka cuisine, where the grain is eaten in many ways beyond the obvious: steamed rice cakes topped with preserved radish, tofu and Chinese chives are a common snack, while during the Dragon Boat Festival, glutinous rice flour forms a sticky dough for banzong (粄粽) or leaf-wrapped dumplings.
At May Snow, red yeast rice is also used to marinate squid that’s then deep-fried until airy, crisp and impressively tender. The crunch factor is cleverly raised with taro chips.
But the real showstopper is supposed to be the salt-baked wild mountain chicken, a dish so popular that pre-ordering it before your visit is essential. Having missed that crucial step, we pick the Hakka-style braised tofu, laced with a savory brown sauce of fatty pork and preserved radish.
For dessert, ask for the niuwenshui (牛汶水), Hakka-style glutinous rice balls in syrup topped with crushed peanuts. Then sit back and feel thankful that Taiwan’s melting pot of ethnicities has brought this cuisine to your doorstep.
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