10 Best Hualien Foods Everyone Should Try

Fried egg scallion pancake is a street snack that’s highly popular in Hualien. There are 2 dining cars selling this local speciality on the same urban street. They have a loyal following, often with long daily queues, whether it rains or shines. To make it, the dough with chopped scallion is fried in hot oil until golden, then fresh eggs are added and wrapped with dough. The fragrant pancake is then ready to be served.

The fried egg is the pancake’s biggest feature, which is half-cooked in oil. The scallion’s aroma bursts in your mouth with every bite, as does the oozing fresh yolk. It's a soft and crispy snack for many residents in Hualien to stave off their afternoon cravings. If you are not used to half-cooked eggs, you may ask yours to be well-cooked.

Bamboo rice is one of Hualien’s most popular local rice dishes. The bamboo gives the treat its unmistakable natural aroma. Uncooked rice is placed inside a bamboo then baked over a fire. Enjoying the speciality can be a truly special dining experience. You can strike the bamboo against the stone yourself to crack it open and you can then peel off the bamboo to enjoy the delicious rice baked inside. 

Hualien's bamboo rice is often served with salted pork. The rice mixes well with the moist and tasty pork. Many restaurants in Hualien feature bamboo rice on their menu, and you can easily find it served at popular stalls in the night market. 

Pulled sweet potato and taro is a popular night market delicacy in Hualien. Sweet and refreshing, it's a popular dessert enjoyed by young and old, especially those on a vegetarian diet. If you've come to Hualien for a night market experience and had tried out plenty of the strong-tasting salty food, you might as well try pulled sweet potato and taro to relieve your taste buds. 

The making of this dessert is quite simple. Vendors select the freshest ingredients, cut them into blocks or long strips, coat them in sugar. Fried or roasted, the sugar coating on the outer layer is very crisp, but the sweet potato and taro under the sugar coating itself are soft and flavoursome.

Cuban sandwiches are a special treat in Hualien. Hualien's Cuban sandwich is a delicious and inexpensive snack that costs you little. The sellers make a strict selection of pickles, cheeses, long-shape bread, mustard and yellow sauce. The fillings come in many different choices – tuna, pork and chicken being the most common. 

Sellers would wrap the meat, cheese, sauce and pickles into the bread, and then cook the whole sandwich in a toaster. The preparation takes only about 5 minutes. The delightful sandwich is crispy on the outside and soft and fresh on the inside. The pickles enhance the flavour of the meat.

Deep-fried crab goes very well with beer and a circle of friends. Crab is among the highly popular seafood selections offered by many restaurants and snack stands in Hualien. At night, well-known mobile snack stalls would sell a variety of fried ingredients, including the popular deep-fried crab. Fresh and fleshy crabs are selected to ensure delicious treat, allowing the soft and plump crab meat to be enjoyed after each bite of the hard shell. 

Hualien's crab is superb in quality. It is fried quickly in hot oil and seasoned with garlic, basil, pepper, chopped scallion and chilli. It has a strong spicy taste and matches well with beer.

Mochi is widely sold in Hualien with each vendor offering different sets of flavours. Hualien mochi is a very popular souvenir, handmade and usually packed in a beautiful gift box. The steamed glutinous rice is pounded by hand and then filled with red beans, peanuts, sesame, and other ingredients. Hualien mochi is typically made on the day without any preservatives, so its shelf life is very short. 

You may also want to try the mochi of the Amis people in Hualien, which has an amazingly chewy texture. They pound the steamed rice into mochi by hand and prepare their mochi in a traditional wooden steamer. Before serving, they add a sprinkle peanut powder on it.