The Michelin Guide’s Bib Gourmand list this year for the first time features restaurants and street vendors in Tainan and Kaohsiung.
The list — released on Tuesday and featuring 141 establishments in Taiwan, 50 more than last year — highlights restaurants and vendors that offer a three-course meal for a fixed price of no more than NT$1,000.
Taipei restaurants were included for the fifth consecutive year and Taichung establishments for the third time.
Photo: Tsai Shu-yuan, Taipei Times
The Bib Gourmand selections include 57 restaurants and night market stalls in Taipei, 37 in Taichung, 27 in Tainan and 20 in Kaohsiung, Michelin said.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the cities’ food and beverage industries have shown great resilience and demonstrate the variety of the local food culture with at least 20 cuisine types represented, international director of Michelin Guides Gwendal Poullennec said.
“Extending their research for the first time to the historic city of Tainan as well as to the coastal city of Kaohsiung, our inspectors have been impressed by their respective culinary scenes,” Poullennec said.
In Taipei, six new eateries have been recognized with a Bib Gourmand distinction: the 60-year-old Yunnanese cuisine stalwart Jen Ho Yuan (人和園), dim sum restaurant Chuan Mu Yuan (川畝園), Ah-guo Soup Noodles (阿國切仔麵), vegetarian restaurant Little Tree Food (小小樹食) on Daan Road, Taiwanese eatery Yuan Wei (元味料理) and chicken restaurant Chi Chia Chuang (雞家莊) on Changchun Road.
Of Taichung’s six new entrants, three are Taiwanese cuisine eateries — Bamboo Country (竹之鄉), Feng Chi Goose (鳳記鵝肉老店) and Mr Good (好先生), Michelin said.
The other three are Hello VietNam (越南你好), which specializes in North Vietnamese cuisine; Xiao Chu Den (小初店), which features Taiwanese snacks; and 60-year-old Hakka restaurant Niou Jia Juang (牛稼莊).
Tainan boasts the most new Bib Gourmand entrants, including 19 chosen for their street food specialties, the guide said.
Many selections are decades-old stalwarts well-known for their local offerings — milkfish dishes, sticky rice cakes, shaved ice, fish skin soup and calamari rice noodles, it said.
Among the 20 Kaohsiung eateries on the Bib Gourmand list, nine offer Taiwanese cuisine and six are casual eateries, while the others feature Thai or Chinese food, Michelin said.
The full list of Michelin-starred restaurants would be released on Tuesday along with the Michelin Guide Taipei, Taichung, Tainan & Kaohsiung 2022.
A study published by online booking platform Expedia revealed searches for travel to Taipei have ballooned 2,786 percent following the lifting of COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions due to the city being a “designation dupe” for Seoul. The TikTok trend for duping — referring to substituting a designation for a more inexpensive alternative — helped propel interest in Taipei, it said in a consumer survey titled “Unpack ‘24,” which was conducted from September to October in 14 countries. Location dupes are “every bit as delightful as the tried-and-true places travelers love,” Expedia trend tracker Melanie Fish said of the year’s popular alternatives, which
A small-scale protest that called on the government to cancel its plan to welcome Indian migrant workers in a bid to tackle Taiwan’s labor shortage was held in Taipei yesterday. During the protest, comprised of a few dozen people staged in front of the Presidential Office on Ketagalan Boulevard, the protest’s chief initiator, a woman identified only as “Yuna” said they wanted the central government to reconsider allowing migrant workers from India to enter Taiwan. Most people in Taiwan had little knowledge about the potential plan to allow in Indian migrant workers until a report in the media last month, she
NO RELIGIOUS VISIT: The interior minister said visas were not issued for 218 applicants for a tour of Taiwan organized by a temple due to their own non-response Chinese who had sought to enter Taiwan for a religious event were not granted visas because they were not “religious personnel” and planned to visit places not listed on their group tour’s itinerary, then never supplied supplemental information upon request, the Ministry of the Interior and the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. Visas were not issued for 218 of the 239 applicants, as they did not provide additional information or explanations as requested, Minister of the Interior Lin Yu-chang (林右昌) told a committee at the legislature in Taipei. Multiple groups, including the Taiwan Matsu Fellowship, had signed a petition that sought
A military procurement announcement released on Friday shows the purchase of “air/surface” weapons bound for Taitung, likely for the newly purchased Block 70 F-16V jets still awaiting delivery. The announcement shows a NT$17.22 billion (US$548.91 million) purchase agreement signed on Nov. 13 for “aircraft air/surface weapons,” to be delivered to the air force's Seventh Tactical Flight Wing stationed at the Taitung Air Force Base. The sale is scheduled to take place over nine years, with delivery completed by Nov. 30, 2032. Considering the recipient, analysts believe they are likely air-to-air or air-to-surface missiles for the military’s 66 upgraded Block 70 F-16V jets awaiting