Don't queue just because everyone else is queueing.
Taiwan loves a queue. Sometimes it's worth it. Sometimes there's a better bowl five minutes away.
Local Rules
A few things we'd tell you before you join the queue.
The ugly breakfast shop might be the right one.
Fluorescent lights, plastic stools, no English menu. That's not always a warning sign.
Don't spend your whole night market visit in one queue.
Try more things. Share portions. Keep moving. The best night market meal is rarely just one stall.
Guides
All guidesSituational: what to do with the time and hunger you actually have.
Visitors heading to a night market for the first time
How to eat at a Taiwanese night market
The unwritten rules — cash, queues, stools, and how not to block a fryer — so a night market feels like dinner instead of an obstacle course.
First-time visitors with two days in Taipei
What to eat in Taipei on your first two days
A practical eating order for a first landing in Taipei — breakfast shops, a lunch bowl, one dumpling steamer, and a night market you can actually finish.
Dishes
All dishesIconic dish
Beef Noodle Soup
牛肉麵
A bowl of wheat noodles in a soy-and-spice broth, with beef that should pull apart with chopsticks — Taiwan’s unofficial national dish, and not a night-market snack.
Iconic dish
Lu Rou Fan
滷肉飯
Minced or sliced pork belly braised in soy, spooned over rice — the everyday Taiwanese lunch, and the dish that tells you more about a kitchen than any tasting menu.
Iconic dish
Xiaolongbao
小籠包
Soup dumplings — a thimble of hot broth sealed inside a pleated wrapper, famous in Taipei even though the idea came from Jiangnan.
Night markets
All marketsTaipei
Raohe Night Market
饒河街夜市
A single packed lane by Songshan’s Ciyou Temple, famous for the pepper bun at the gate and easier to finish in one evening than Shilin.
Taipei
Shilin Night Market
士林夜市
Taipei’s largest night market — part tourist carnival, part actual dinner — and the one visitors mix up with the wrong MRT stop.