In Taiwan, you’re never that far away from an amazing meal. Some of the best meals I’ve had abroad have come from Taiwanese night markets. Night markets can be found in almost every major city. Some cities even have multiple night markets going on at the same time.
Taichung has one of the biggest night markets on the island, Fengchia Night Market (逢甲夜市 / feng jia ye shi). When given the opportunity to check out another night market in the city, I jumped at the chance. This time, I headed to Yizhong Street Night Market (一中街夜市 / yi zhong jie ye shi) in the North District of Taichung.
At first glance, this night market doesn’t look that much different from many of the other night markets out there. While Fengchia Night Market is ginormous and easy to get lost in, Yizhong Night Market is smaller and feels more intimate.
The entire night market is centered around the National Taichung University of Science and Technology. There’s one main intersection with a huge food hall on the corner, which makes it easier to navigate around.
There is also a lot of shopping available. There is a small mall on the right of this photo.
Wanting to eat something, we picked up a chicken steak. This particular chicken was delicious. It was not too dry and had a nice flavor to it.
With chicken steak in hand, we went forth to search for a drink place. Sorry about the photos some of them are a little blurry because of how dark and how variable the lighting is.
We settled on a place called 水巷 (shui xiang) or Water Alley, which is kind of funny because it also sounds like 學生 (xue sheng) which is student.
I wonder if that’s intentional.
We got a passion fruit green tea with Q and a cranberry tea.
Water Alley Tea Lane was pretty good. I loved how they used fresh fruit in their drinks. I also loved that the menu was easy to read and understand. Though it’s not as special as some of my top boba shops in Taiwan, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a shop that was notably bad. I would come back again to try out some of their other drinks including kumquat green tea minus sour plum.
One of the most unique things I tried at Yizhong Night Market was this runner bean (蜜花豆 / mi hua dou) shaved ice dessert from Yizhong Fengren Ice. Given how popular the shop is, I had high hopes. The dessert consists of runner beans and milk ice cream on top of pickled sour plum shaved ice (酸梅冰 / suan mei bing). I think I would have been fine with the sour plum part, but there was a saltiness that threw me off.
I begrudgingly ate it as we walked on to find more things to eat. I don’t normally have to hold my breath to eat something, but I found myself doing this just to get past the pickled flavor. I’m sure it’s delicious, but I think it will take some getting used to for myself. I do recommend checking it out, if the thought of a sweet, sour, and savory dessert piques your interest.
There’s plenty more to eat and try here, but we ran out of time. Will have to come back and find even more unique, fun, and delicious things to eat at Yizhong Street Night Market.