Seeing, Smelling, and Feeling Food in Taiwan

When it comes to Taiwanese food, flavours are just the tip of the sensory iceberg.

Jan 29, 2025

Scallion pancake I got at a stall in Taiyuan Rd, Taipei.

Halo and Happy Lunar New Year! Most of us here in Indonesia are enjoying a super long weekend celebrating a few public holidays, including the Lunar New Year, so I hope you're doing great and getting a well-deserved break.

Today’s newsletter is about some of the foods I tried during my seven-day trip to Taiwan earlier this month. But here’s the twist: In this essay, I want to step away from the usual focus on taste and explore food through the lens of our other senses.

We often talk about how food tastes, but I believe there's so much more that goes into our eating experience. Sight, smell, and texture all play a huge role in how we perceive a dish. Today, I want to experiment with describing a meal entirely through these senses, without mentioning taste at all. So let’s do this challenge. As a reader, can you still imagine the food just from these sensory details?

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When we describe food, it's natural to start with the most obvious sense: taste. As a food writer, this is what I've trained myself to do – to convey the flavours and translate them into a digestible (haha) language for my audience. I’ve worked hard to move away from generic descriptions like calling a dessert “not too sweet,” and instead, I focus on pinpointing the different flavour elements. For example, mentioning the richness of butter or the nuttiness of palm sugar.

But beyond taste, there’s one often-overlooked element that significantly affects how we perceive food: our senses

Few studies have shown that our senses play a huge role in how we perceive a dish. Here’s a gist, quoted from a study by Michigan State University :

Sight: You know the saying "we eat with our eyes"? It’s kind of true. Sometimes we judge food based on how it looks. For example, green foods are commonly perceived as fresh and more nutritious, while the colour of a cup can influence how we perceive the taste of a drink (Neff, 2017).
Smell: We also judge food by its smell. From a distance, we can tell what's cooking in the kitchen, we recognise the scent of coffee brewing, and we can even tell when milk has gone bad just by smelling it. Smell plays such a big role in how we taste, there’s even an experiment where a jelly bean tastes completely different when you plug your nose (Neff, 2017).
Texture: Our mouth doesn’t just taste, it also recognises texture. Think about biting into a boba: it’s chewy, sometimes sticky, and can get stuck in your teeth, all while gliding across your tongue. That’s texture. In fact, a recent experiment was done to determine the freshness of potato chips just by listening to the crunch (Neff, 2017).

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Focusing on senses beyond taste highlights the vibrant, chaotic essence of food culture, and Taiwanese cuisine is the perfect example of that.

Taiwanese cuisine is incredibly diverse. While heavily influenced by Han Chinese culture, it’s also shaped by the unique blend of influences from the island’s Indigenous cultures and the semi-tropical climate that nurtures its local crops. To try and cover every aspect would require a multi-part essay. So, let's focus on what I find most interesting, and how Taiwanese food offers a sensory journey that extends far beyond just taste.

✊ Before we continue, I would like to acknowledge that the Indigenous people including the Siraya and Atayal are the traditional owners of the land that we know as Tainan and Taipei today. 🇹🇼

Doufu Bing (Tainan)

Doufu bing in 懷舊小棧杏仁豆腐冰, Tainan. (GMap: here)

It was 16°C during our first night in Tainan, but the wind definitely made it feel like it was 12°C. As a certified child of the tropics, this was a bit chilly for me. But it also didn’t stop me from getting doufu bing. If you know little Mandarin and saw the picture above, you would probably already guess that the two words are pretty self explanatory – it’s tofu and ice.

👀 SIGHT: We got two bowls with a fluffy pile of shaved ice. The tofu, cut into round semi-diced pieces like mango chunks, sat right on top, making the ice wasn’t too high. One bowl had white barley on top, giving it a mostly white look with little brown and black specks from the barley. The other had mung beans, which added a nice yellowish-green contrast. Both were drizzled with condensed milk that glistened as it sat into the tofu crevices. Shaking the bowl also made the tofu jiggle, which was kind of fun.
👃 SMELL: Right away, I got a sweet, dairy-like scent of the condensed milk. The barley and mung beans don’t add much to the aroma, other than a subtle grainy smell like husked rice. The tofu itself is made from almonds. It has a milder scent compared to the more tangy aroma of soybean tofu and has a floral, almost medicinal note.
👅 TEXTURE: The shaved ice is crunchy at first, but it melts quickly in my mouth, blending nicely with the condensed milk. The beans are so soft they’re basically velvety, with just enough fibrous texture to remind you they're beans. The tofu is like soft pudding – it doesn’t leak water when you bite into it, instead, the liquid and solid blend together as one. Even with three different textures, I don't need to chew much because they will just melt together in my mouth.

Su Shi Mian Xian (Taipei)

*Su shi mian xian at* 古早味冰/素麵線, Taipei. (GMap: here)

It was around 15:00 when I decided it was time for my second lunch. That morning, I ran my very first half-marathon in Taipei. So I took a nap afterwards until my stomach decided to forget that it had been fed. I was completely starving, and when I’m hungry, my brain will not be braining. So instead of looking for options, I just wandered around the street near my hostel. I pulled up my trusty Google Lens to check out some menus and, conveniently, ended up at 古早味冰/素麵線 to get su shi mian xian (vegetarian rice noodle soup).

The stall was tiny, with just two tables on the street and one more tucked beside the counter where the lady prepped the noodles. I sat facing the wall, which was plastered with posters, stickers and notes that I wished I could understand if only I spoke Mandarin. It would’ve made chatting with the lady way easier too, instead of me awkwardly pointing at things on the menu.

👀 SIGHT: When the big bowl of noodles arrived, I could see it was packed with mian xian (rice noodles) – not floating, but fully submerged in a thick, glossy, almost slurry-like broth. The noodles were thin, thinner than spaghetti but thicker than angel hair, and they were rather short, almost like they’d been chopped with scissors. On top, there were two types of soy products: tofu skin and crunchy bean curds that resembled crispy pork cracklings. The coriander leaves, which the lady kindly checked with me about beforehand, were generously sprinkled on top, adding a fresh, green pop of colour.
👃 SMELL: The smell is a mix of deep, umami-rich soy broth, with a hint of oil-like aroma from the crunchy bean curds. There’s also a fresh, herbal note from the coriander leaves. To be fair, the whole stall itself also has this aroma that I can smell the moment I sit down because despite not being busy, the lady is constantly cooking and prepping more mian xian, especially for takeaways. So when the bowl arrived in front of me, it was like the scents around me were amplified.
👅 TEXTURE: The mian xian has a slippery texture, sliding smoothly between my chopsticks, while the thick, slurry-like broth clings to the noodles. The bean curds give a satisfying crunch that contrasts nicely with the softness of the noodles, while the coriander leaves add a fresh, crunchy pop.

Shui Jian Bao (Taipei)

Scallion *shui jian bao* at 翁記水煎包新生店, Taipei. (GMap: here)

Sometimes, the best food of a trip isn’t on your list at all, so I’m a firm believer in trying whatever catches my eye. That’s how I ended up with this pan-fried steamed bun (shui jian bao). I had spotted the shop on my way to dinner but decided to wait and see if I had room for them afterwards. But let’s be real, there’s always room for a side snack. So on my way back to the hostel, I made a quick stop and grabbed a scallion shui jian bao.

👀 SIGHT: The shui jian bao is round and white, with a nice caramelised bottom that contrasts against its soft, pillow-like fluffiness. The top has an irregular, pleated pattern, hinting that it was shaped by hand. This bun goes through two cooking stages: steaming and pan-frying, giving it a shine that catches the light, probably from the oil used to fry it. With every bite, the green scallions become more visible, even tinting the firm tofu inside.
👃 SMELL: From a few feet away (actual feet, not the American system), I could already catch a mix of yeast, steam, and oil wafting from the shop. The scent became stronger as I got closer, thanks to the steaming and pan-frying happening in the store. As I stood there deciding what to order, the smell of dough steaming and oil frying occasionally drifted over. After the first bite, the scallions released a fresh, herbaceous scent, still sharp from the brief steaming, almost like the crisp bite of raw alliums. There's also a hint of white pepper, adding a spicy and sweet kick to the aroma.
👅 TEXTURE: As a steamed bun, obviously, it's soft and fluffy, but I love how they pan-fried it, giving the bottom a caramelised touch. And I mean actual caramelised because the dough itself has sugar in it. Since the bottom of the bun is thin, it lets the fried part get crispy, though not brittle since it still has that chewy gluten texture. The scallions bring a nice contrast, being both soft and crunchy, and there's also some firm tofu inside that adds a crumbly texture to the mix.

@berusahavegan belom ketemu nasi nggak masalah ya ☝️😔🍚 #travel #taiwan #kaohsiung #udon #berusahavegan

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Writing this, even a few weeks after my trip to Taiwan, turned out not to be as hard as I thought. While taste is the first thing I remember when writing about food, reflecting on and tracing back to the other senses came pretty naturally. In fact, it felt like accessing memories I rarely tap into. These small details often get overlooked, but when I write them down, I find they help me remember my eating experiences more vividly. More holistically.

I loved Taiwanese food. Even though the ingredients are simple, they’re usually prepared in a way that creates multiple textures and flavours at once. It’s chaotic and vibrant, and focusing just on taste feels like an understatement.