Forget Din Tai Fung: Taiwan’s most storied restaurants date back to the exodus years of the late 1940s, when migrations from China brought new ingredients and flavors to these shores. Here are five old-school eateries in Taipei that, while relatively humble, still deliver some of the island’s best comfort food.

Photographs by Chris Stowers

*Left to right:* Preparing dumplings in the kitchen of Lao Shan Dong; its manager Yu Huai-tzeng is the grandson of the restaurant’s founder.

If Taipei’s food culture had a most defining year, it would be 1949. It was then that three major culinary influences converged in the Taiwanese capital: Taiwan’s majority Hokkien population from China’s Fujian Province, who’d been settling the island since the 17th century; the Japanese, who ruled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945; and an influx of more than a million mainland Chinese refugees, who arrived in the late 1940s with Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist armies as they retreated at the end of the Chinese Civil War.

In the Taipei of 1949, these diverse populations and cooking styles came together in a great melting pot known as Ximen, or “West Gate.” Named for a gate on a Qing-era city wall—a wall razed by the Japanese to expand a railway line—the neighborhood marked the boundary between the old city and a buzzing new district of theaters, tea shops, and department stores. As one crossed the railroad tracks, one passed through a horse track–sized roundabout whose infield held a teeming marketplace with a diverse array of hawker stalls.

Here and in the nearby West Gate Market, Hokkien-speaking Taiwanese vendors sold sweet potatoes, oyster omelets, and Japanese-style lunch boxes, while the 1949 mainlanders introduced a wide variety of regional Chinese cuisines: wheat-based cooking from north of the Yangtze River; the strong, spicy flavors of Sichuan and Hunan; and new ingredients like fermented cabbages, soybean pastes, and a love of beef.

Many of Taipei’s oldest and most venerated restaurants—known locally as “old shops” or lao dian—were born as street stalls in this postwar marketplace. Today, as one walks through Ximen, whose teeming pedestrian streets are the city’s answer to Tokyo’s Center Gai, one will find any number of lao dian like Mei Guan Yuan or Lao Shan Dong, each with signs that read SINCE 1946 or SINCE 1949. Elsewhere in Taipei, other establishments recall different waves of the 1949 migration, such as Peng Yuan and Kunming Islamic. On their menus is everything from dishes invented for Chiang Kai-shek’s state banquets to quick, working-class meals like beef noodle soup.

If they have anything in common, it’s that over the last 75 years, Taiwan has evolved its own distinct collection of flavors that you won’t find anywhere else. As Taiwanese-American author Clarissa Wei recently observed in her 2023 award-winning cookbook Made in Taiwan, “While many of our dishes have Chinese roots or were brought over by immigrants from China,” Taiwan has nevertheless developed “a food culture that’s completely and unquestionably unique.”

These five old-school eateries offer a taste of that tradition:

*Left to right:* Cutting noodles by hand at Lao Shan Dong; a bowl of zha jiang mian (dry noodles with a sauce of stir-fried bean curd) accompanied by side dishes at the same venue.

LAO SHAN DONG HOMEMADE NOODLES

Beef noodle soup—cheap, hearty, and available everywhere on the island—is unquestionably one of Taiwan’s most famous dishes. Though rooted in various styles of northern Chinese cooking, it is in fact a unique Taiwanese hybrid that evolved during the years following the Chinese Civil War. Unlike typical northern Chinese soups, the bone broth in beef noodle soup, or niu rou mian, is flavored with dou ban jiang, a Sichuanese paste made from fermented broad beans. The novel combination was born in Taipei’s postwar squatter villages and made a huge change in Taiwan’s street food.

Many of Taipei’s best and oldest beef noodle places are still in Ximen, which many believe was the crucible of cultural mixing in which the dish was born. One of them, Lao Shan Dong Homemade Noodles, is one of the few such establishments recognized by the Michelin Guide to Taipei, where it has been listed every year since the guide was introduced in 2018.

In the basement of Ximen’s Wan Nian Department Store, one enters its bustling cafeteria-style dining room by walking past the kitchen, where white-aproned cooks roll out flour noodles and boil soup stock. The restaurant has been located here since the 1970s, but its true origins were as a West Gate street stall back in 1949.

Manager Yu Huai-tzeng, a big man with a strong jaw and a warm smile, is the 49-year-old grandson of the restaurant’s founder, Yu Hsien-chi. His grandfather, he says, was a book- keeper from Qingdao who joined the Chinese Nationalists’ retreat to Taiwan in 1949. In Ximen’s newly formed mainlander ghetto, Hsien-chi’s wife—remembered fondly as Granny Yu—set up a stand selling mantou, a puffy steamed bun popular in her native province of Shandong. But to feed her eight children, she’d also make noodles from leftover flour.

“That’s why we have jia chang mian (homemade noodles) in our name,” says Yu, the grandson. “Because they’re just like the noodles my grandmother served at home.”

Customers noticed Granny Yu’s kids squatting in the street slurping the noodles—“We were so poor we didn’t even have stools then,” Yu grins—and some began requesting the dish. As the noodles became popular, the street stall relocated to a storefront in a nearby alleyway.

Today, Lao Shan Dong’s broth, boiled daily for eight hours, incredibly manages to smack the palate as both hearty and light at once. The noodles—thick, broad ribbons somewhat akin to Italian pappardelle—are made from big sheets of thick dough that are folded like fabric and then cut with a meat cleaver. Garnishes consist of spring onions and pickled cabbage.

The menu is extraordinarily simple. Your noodle soup will come with either tender chunks of beef or gelatinous, melt-in-your-mouth tendons, or a combination. A third option is zha jiang mian—dry noodles topped with a pan-fried sauce of meat, bean curd, and vegetables, and finished with a glaze of broth.

Serving me a bowl, Yu grinned, “We always ate beef growing up. That’s why we are all so big and strong!” (Shop 15, B1 Wan Nian Bldg., 70 Xining South Rd.)

*Left to right:* Home-style tofu at Peng Yuan; the same group’s owner Chuck Peng at one of his banquet halls.

PENG YUAN

Peng Chang-kuei, a Hunanese chef who prepared banquets for Chiang Kai-shek, George H.W. Bush, and Henry Kissinger, was perhaps, by the time of his death in 2016, Taiwan’s most storied cook and restaurateur. His biggest claim to fame, however, was as the inventor of a dish that by a string of bizarre coincidences has become almost universal in American Chinese restaurants: General Tso’s Chicken.

“My father actually invented many dishes, but for some reason that’s the one that became famous,” laughs his son Chuck Peng, a youthful 70-year-old who has grown his father’s legend into a small empire comprising four restaurants and six banquet halls under the banner of the Peng Yuan Restaurant Group. The banquet center where we meet is a gaudy place with golden Greek statues and a seating capacity of around 1,000 people.

It is a stark contrast to Peng Chang-kuei’s original Taipei restaurant, Peng Yuan, which has been operating since 1982 on Linsen North Road, once the city’s main international entertainment district. Today, the venue retains a demure, stately feel, and Peng’s children run it as a sort of living memorial.

Their father’s life has now achieved a near-mythological status. Born in 1919 near Changsha in China’s Hunan Province, at age 14 he began as an apprentice to a formal personal chef to one of Nationalist China’s top leaders, premier Tan Yankai, “the most notorious gourmand in China,” according to Chuck. He then spent the next two decades cooking for other high-ranking Kuomintang cadres in Changsha, Guilin, and Chongqing before finally following the 1949 retreat to Taiwan.

In Taipei, Chiang Kai-shek named Peng the government’s head banquet chef and, in 1955, tasked him with preparing three consecutive days of state banquets for a crucial visit by the most senior U.S. military leader to visit Taiwan to that point: Admiral Arthur W. Radford, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

General Tso’s Chicken—lightly fried chicken chunks in a sweet, tangy glaze—was served on the final night of Radford’s visit. It was only when asked about the dish that Peng spontaneously named it for General Tso, a.k.a. Zuo Zong-tang, a 19th-century Hunanese army commander who had been instrumental in defeating the Taiping Rebellion.

In 1973, Peng moved to the U.S. and spent nearly a decade running restaurants in New York, Houston, and Atlanta. Henry Kissinger, then U.S. Secretary of State, was a regular at one of his New York restaurants and a noted fan of his chicken.

Peng returned to Taiwan in the 1980s and brought many of his creations with him. Today, Peng Yuan still lists nine of them on its menu, including “Minced Shrimp in Lettuce,” a savory hors d’oeuvre in bite-sized lettuce cups; and “Home-style Tofu.” The latter was concocted for another of Taiwan’s presidents, Chiang Ching-kuo, who burst into the restaurant one night after closing time. Finding only tofu in the larder, Peng cooked it in a simple brown sauce.

“President Chiang ate two large bowls of it with rice,” Chuck says. “But there was actually nothing special about the ingredients. It was my father’s technique that made it so delicious” (pengyuan.com.tw).

General Tso’s Chicken, home-style tofu, and minced shrimp in lettuce at Peng Yuan.

*Left to right:* Puffed rice is added to a crab and seafood soup at the Kao Chi outlet on Nanjing East Road; Kao Chi’s longtime manager Liu Su-jin (left) with Nanjing branch supervisor Fion Lai.

KAO CHI

In the early 1950s, when street vendor Gao Si-mei finished frying a large batch of his Shanghai-style pan-fried pork buns, or potstickers, he’d hoist the pot upright and bang on it with a wooden spatula. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the signal—“hot buns now!”—and came lining up. The potstickers, fried 70 at a time, were also popular with a primly elite set, the wives of high-ranking military officers in Chiang Kai-shek’s armies. These society ladies often spent languid afternoons engaged in mah-jongg and gossip and sent their drivers to buy Gao’s buns. It created a rather extraordinary sight in 1950s Taipei. Where most street traffic consisted of bicycles, pedicabs, and public buses, here was a queue of uniformed drivers lining up with their automobiles in front of a simple street vendor.

A native of China’s Anhui Province, Gao moved to Shanghai when he was 16 to learn the art of dian xin, or Shanghai-style dim sum. He came to Taipei as a refugee in 1949 and set out his first shingle on Yongkang Steet, which today is renowned as one of the city’s top foodie spots. In the post–World War II years, however, the area was home to an educated cohort of new mainland immigrants, especially government officials, civil servants, and university professors. “When they ate his buns, it was like a taste of home,” says Liu Su-jin, Kao Chi’s longtime manager.

In the 1960s, Gao finally moved into a shopfront just a couple doors over from what would become his famous neighbor, the dumpling restaurant Din Tai Fung. Since then, his family has expanded his legacy to include three Kao Chi restaurants. The menu has also grown to some 300 dishes, including Hong Kong–style dim sum and stir-fry recipes from Zhejiang and Jiangsu. Yet the restaurant never stopped frying pot- stickers at street level in view of passersby—a hallmark to this day.

Other favorites at Kao Chi include the dong po rou (braised pork belly), crab soup with puffed rice, and Shanghai-style vegetable fried rice. The potstickers are an absolute must. Made from a continuously cultured “old dough” (by using dough from an earlier batch, chefs never need to add yeast), these hearty dumplings are first boiled and then fried ever so lightly so that they explode with juices on the first bite. Scrumptious? Absolutely (kao-chi.com).

Xiaolongbao dumplings and potstickers at Kao Chi.

The Kao Chi outlet on Nanjing East Road.

*Left to right:* Burmese tea leaf salad at Kunming Islamic Restaurant; the eatery’s sign of halal authenticity.

KUNMING ISLAMIC RESTAURANT

Resting his elbows on a colorful collage of banknotes from across the globe—Kenyan shillings, Turkish lira, Malaysian ringgit, all contributed by visiting diners—Jacob Ma, the proprietor of Kunming Islamic Restaurant, opens a leather-covered binder of handwritten pages. It’s a “family chronicle” covering 800 years of his clan’s history. Lately, says the 67-year-old Chinese Hui Muslim, he’s taken special care recording the family’s 35-year migration from Dali in China’s Yunnan Province, through Myanmar (then known as Burma), and finally to Taiwan in 1982.

In 1947, Ma’s parents fled with the Nationalist retreat, following military units out of Yunnan and into Burma’s rugged hills. Unlike refugees from China’s coastal areas, the only way out of landlocked Yunnan was overland. They traveled mostly on foot, sometimes on narrow, dirt caravan trails carved out for mules and horses. With long pauses in temporary camps, their route followed the old Burma Road to its southern terminus at Lashio, a large town in the Shan Hills, almost 600 kilometers from home.

“It was a brutal trek,” Ma recounts. “One of my aunts died along the way.”

In Lashio, his parents ran a street stall selling rice noodles with beef. Ma was born there in 1958.

Though Taiwan’s Nationalist government often had limited means, it never forgot about its old compatriots. In the early 1980s, then-president Chiang Ching-kuo welcomed thousands of Yunnanese in Burma, including Ma and his family, to repatriate to Taiwan.

After initially working in construction in Taipei, Ma and his wife Fatimah—a fellow Yunnanese Muslim refugee—opened Kunming Islamic Restaurant in 1994. It began with classic Yunnan–Burmese dishes like tea salad, deep-fried samosas, and beef with fermented cabbage, all still menu highlights today. But the selection grew as the restaurant became known as one of Taipei’s rare halal eateries, and visiting Muslims began requesting dishes from their homelands. “They would come in and say, ‘Fatimah, can you make this? Here is my mother’s recipe,’” Ma recalls. “They would only have to tell her once, and she could make it.”

The menu has since incorporated Indian curries (their chana masala is one of Taiwan’s tastiest), Middle Eastern favorites, and Chinese standards like kung pao chicken. It’s a wonderful collection of multinational comfort foods held together by an eccentric consistency. But if you’re craving authentic flavors, go for the Burmese tea salad (fb.com/kunming.islamic.restaurant).

Jacob Ma, the owner of Kunming Islamic Restaurant; outside the same establishment. — *Left to right:* Jacob Ma, the owner of Kunming Islamic Restaurant; outside the same establish.

*Left to right:* Wagyu salad, tempura, and “Five color Donburi” at Mei Guan Yuan; outside the same restaurant.

MEI GUAN YUAN

During World War II, Taipei native Chang Liang-tie was forced to leave his position as an apprentice sushi chef when drafted into the Japanese military. After serving in Hong Kong, he returned to Taipei at the war’s end, only to find that his former mentor was now in Japan. Out of devotion and a desire to complete his training, he followed him to Osaka. Then, in 1946, Chang came home to establish the business that has so far supported three generations of his line.

Today, Mei Guan Yuan is one of Taipei’s oldest Japanese restaurants, serving a mix of izakaya fare and set-menu dishes. Like most of Ximen’s other “old shops,” it began as a street stall. Early patrons included Japanese awaiting repatriation and mainland Chinese refugees from former Japanese-occupied Manchuria, according to Chang Tu-ching, the founder’s 72-year-old son.

With profits from the street stall, Mei Guan Yuan was able to establish itself in the heart of Ximen on Emei Street. Now, nearly eight decades since its founding, it continues to thrive in two locations directly across the street from each other, each owned by one of Chang’s sons and managed by his grandchildren.

In the older of the two eateries, Chang Tu-ching points to a group of lively elderly gentlemen at the next table, nibbling on sushi and sipping hot sake. “They’ve been coming here for almost 70 years,” he says. “They started coming as students, now some are over 90 years old.”

Meals at Mei Guan Yuan range from rice bowls of minced tuna or tempura for around US$10, to high-end sashimi platters for about five times that much. One standout dish is the “Five-color Donburi,” a cornucopia of seafood over rice including prawn sashimi, shredded crab, salmon roe, abalone, and wuyuzi, a Taiwanese delicacy of cured mullet roe.

Joshua Chang, the founder’s 39-year-old grandson, acknowledges that many “old shops” find it hard to keep going in the second or third generation. But he takes the family legacy very seriously. “My father could show my grandfather that he’d improved and grown the business. I hope to be able to say the same one day,” he says (meiguanyuan.com.tw).

This article originally appeared in the June/July 2025 print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“A Taste of Old Taipei”). Buy a single issue or subscribe here.

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