While Hualien has Dongdamen Night Market, there’s a bunch of great places to eat a short walk away northwest of the night market. Reading the dumplings were a big deal in the area, we decided to check out one of the top rated dumpling places called Gongzheng Baozi (花蓮公正包子店 / hua lian gong zheng bao zi dian).
If you weren’t looking for it, you might easily pass by Gongzheng Baozi. It’s located on the corner of busy Zhongshan Road (中山路 / zhong shan lu) and Gongzheng Street (公正街 / gong zheng jie), but it’s tucked in a little bit. If it weren’t for the tall stacks of buns steaming out front, you might easily miss it.
I’m still surprised just how tall these buns were stacked. They were also super hot even from across the alley way.
You order the baozi by the piece. In addition to dumplings, they also have soup, black tea, and soy milk. Here’s a photo of the line. Even later in the night, Gongzheng attracts a following.
Because everything is freshly made, it wasn’t too long before we had our food.
Meanwhile, this was the view across Gongzheng Street. There’s a drink shop as well as an oyster pancake shop.
For dinner, we enjoyed hot and sour soup (酸辣湯 / suan la tang) and a couple of soup dumplings (小籠包 / xiao long bao). Of course we added a little white pepper (白胡椒 / bai hu jiao) to the soup.
The soup dumplings are the doughy kind, so there isn’t that much in the way of “soup.” That said, they were still good. After being on the Taiwan diet of smaller dishes for so long, four was more than enough along with the soup.
If you’re looking for a late night meal in Hualien or love the doughy type of soup dumplings, drop by Gongzheng Baozi to get good food at a cheap price.