Tasting Taipei: Eating at MOS Burger, Taipei 101 and Saizeriya (Part 2 of a Series)

You’d think that stuffing our faces full in Danshui Old Street just an hour or so before would keep us full for a couple of hours right? Wrong! During the time it took us to explore Xinbeitou, we found ourselves hungry, yet again. There were a lot of charming little coffee shops in the area, but the lure of bright lights screaming MOS Burger was too much.

Despite the fact that MOS Burger has stores all over Asia, I’ve never had the chance to try it, forgetting to seek it out each time I’m somewhere where they have branches. So this time, we made sure to finally eat there before the chance slips by again.

Pad had the MOS Cheese Burger, a large burger with cheese, lots of onions, a thick slice of tomato and chili.

I ordered a Yakiniku Rice Burger. Generously meaty and flavorful, the barbecued beef shreds were absolutely yummy with the rice patties they were sandwiched in. It made for neat eating, though it made me miss the thoroughly saucy, extremely messy yakiniku rice burgers from Sango! Burger Master.

To wash everything down, we got some Matcha Milk and Cocoa Milk, mostly because they looked so pretty in their little glass bottles. Unfortunately, while both were faithful to the taste of matcha and cocoa, it wasn’t really an ideal pairing with our burgers. I wish I opted for a soda instead.

Dinner left us full, energized, and ready to hit the night markets. Our first evening out, we visited Wufenpu, a garments market, so even though there was a wide selection of merchandise, it was sorely lacking in the street food department. Thankfully, the neighborhood 7-Eleven had a lot of snack options. Tuna onigiri and chrysanthemum tea for a midnight snack, anyone?

Day 2: Taipei 101 and Taipei City Hall Station

Day two brought us to Taipei 101. We originally planned to eat at Din Tai Fung; after all, it’s the poster child of Taiwanese dining right? Unfortunately, we had to nix our plans since (1) we couldn’t locate it, (2) I wasn’t feeling too well to take on a full meal.

We ended up checking out the selections at the Taipei 101 food court. This large food court gathers together a large number of food tenants. Somehow though, a vast majority of them were Japanese restaurants. Pad ordered a katsu set from a stall whose name was in characters. It was pretty bland, so I didn’t really go out of my way to find out which stall it was.

On our way back from Taipei 101 to the Taipei City Hall train station, we spotted a Mister Donut outlet. Pad, largely unsatisfied with his meal (he even had KFC from the food court after), decided to go for one of his Mister Donut favorites, the Twist. The one they have in Taipei was a surprise though, looking like a piece of knotted bread than the twist he’s used to locally.

Still during our walk, we stumbled upon Nakayoshi, a small store that sells takeout onigiri, maki, temaki and sushi. It was absolutely heavenly, seeing all of their products lined up prettily, ready for the taking. I had to restrain myself from buying more than one for a snack.

Saizeriya in Ximending

My queasy stomach lasted the whole day, so even if there were loads of interesting looking street food at Ximending, I had to pass them up. Instead, we opted for a place that could serve up familiar food. In this case, we chose to go Italian, so we ended up at Saizeriya, a Japanese chain restaurant that specializes in Italian food, located on the second floor of a building full of restaurants in Ximending.

We ordered minestrone, garlic foccacia and Hawaiian pizza. While adequately filling, our meal left much to be desired, leaving us hankering for pizza from home. Weird to be missing your home country during such a short vacation, but the whole time we were eating, we couldn’t help but compare the food to the good stuff we can get back in the Philippines. On the bright side, the prices were quite cheap so I guess I shouldn’t really be complaining.

Needless to say, our second day in Taipei was pretty lackluster, foodwise. On the bright side, it was pretty lucky that our ho-hum food day fell on the day I couldn’t eat much. For that much at least, I am thankful.

h3>Want more?

Tasting Taipei Part 1: Danshui Old Street
Tasting Taipei Part 3: Sakura Machi, Brothers Hotel Onigiri, Cafe Dog and Cats & Shilin Night Market
Tasting Taipei Part 4: Sushi Take-out, Pon de Ring, Din Tai Fung & Bigtoms