About Foods in Taiwan
Foods in Taiwan helps travelers who don’t read Chinese discover and eat local Taiwanese food.
It started with a breakfast search. Look up breakfast on Google Maps in English or Japanese and you mostly get places that already have reviews in that language: a few famous shops and some brunch cafés. Search 早餐店, the Chinese word for a breakfast shop, and the map fills with the ordinary breakfast shops all around you. They were always there; travelers just didn’t know what to call them. So we built this site to show you what there is to eat, give you the Chinese name to search, and let Google Maps find the one closest to you.
Many visitors arrive in Taiwan without knowing which foods are worth trying, so they rely on other people’s recommendations. But recommendations only cover a handful of dishes, often point to one famous shop in one city, and are easy to miss. A dish nobody told you about isn’t a bad dish — Taiwan is full of authentic everyday food that never makes it onto a list.
So we collected the dishes people in Taiwan eat every day — mostly street food and small-eatery dishes — in one place. Browse the pictures and pick whatever you feel like eating. Because these dishes are sold almost everywhere, there is probably a shop near you right now — no need to travel to a famous restaurant.
Searching Google Maps for “restaurants” shows hundreds of mixed results, and it’s hard to know where to start. Deciding what to eat first makes it simple: tap a dish’s “Find near me” button and it searches that dish’s Chinese name near you, so you also find small local shops that are listed only in Chinese. Every shop already has Google reviews, ratings and pictures, so you can choose for yourself instead of waiting for someone else’s recommendation.
It’s especially handy for solo travelers, backpackers and anyone on a budget: most dishes are single portions that are easy to order alone, prices are low, and wherever you’re staying, there’s probably a shop nearby. It also suits independent travelers who explore Taiwan at their own pace — because these dishes are found almost everywhere, it works just as well in small towns and neighborhoods that guidebooks never mention.
We don’t rank or recommend restaurants. We help you recognize dishes and get their Chinese names — the choice of where to eat is yours.
Dish illustrations are AI-generated for visual consistency. Prices are typical ranges and vary by shop.
Who runs this site
Foods in Taiwan is run from Taiwan by @food_guide_in_taiwan on Instagram.
How dishes and prices are chosen
The dishes are the ones people in Taiwan eat every day, chosen from everyday experience of eating here — not from rankings or reviews. Prices are typical ranges from that same everyday experience; they vary by shop and city, so treat them as a guide.
Contact
Send a direct message to @food_guide_in_taiwan on Instagram — for corrections, a dish we are missing, or anything else.
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