Shilin Night Market

I guess you can’t have gone Taipei and not take a little trip to Shilin Night Market 士林夜市 . It’s one of the most famous night market in Taipei!

A quick MRT ride to the Jiantan Station 劍潭站 on the Danshui line. They also have a Shilin Station but oddly the Shilin Night Market 士林夜市 is actually much nearer to the  Jiantan Station 劍潭站.

The old Shilin Market 士林夜市 was actually torn down in October 2002 due to hygiene reasons so all the food stalls were relocated to a temporary area a short walk away from Jiantan Station 劍潭站.

Shilin Night Market  士林夜市 opens from about 4pm to 2am and there are 2 sections. The food area and the shopping area. We headed over to the food area first.

Here I’ll try to show you some of the famous food stuff that Shilin Night Market  士林夜市 offers. In the picture above you can see Lemon Aiyu Jelly 檸檬愛玉 .

Above are some grilled taiwan sausages.

There were so many stores selling the same dishes we eventually just randomly chose one that looked decent enough.

This is a bowl of cuttlefish with gravy. I’m allergic to seafood so I didn’t try it personally. Dad said it was okay while Mum didn’t like it.

Another famous dish… Oyster omelet (蚵仔煎). I ate some of the egg… it’s not bad but on the slightly sweet side compared to our Singapore version.

And of course we ordered Smelly tofu. You may have read my post on Smelly toufu before but this version is not deep fried. It was just lightly fried with some gravy. My sister tried smelly toufu for the first time and you should watch the video attached at the end of this post to see her reaction! LOL.

My mum’s favorite store was this teppanyaki store on the right side of the food section. I’ve heard that is a rather popular store as well.  They ordered quite a few dishes and they were all really good. The best was probably the gindara or cod fish.

We ordered the drinks from the nearby vending machine. The lemon winter melon drink was actually quite nice!

My own favorite would probably be the Deep fried chicken fillet (豪大大雞排). The portion is huge so I strongly advise that you share it! I heard that this was the very store that sold those original fried chicken that sparked the huge trend.

There were quite a few food that we had and wasn’t captured on film so if you are there you can also try the Fried chicken steak (炸雞排), Small bun wrapped in large bun (大餅包小餅), Fried buns (生煎包), Peanut candy (花生糖), Tempura (甜不辣) and Bubble tea (珍珠奶茶) amongst many more.

A street away is the shopping area of Shilin Night Market 士林夜市. Here is like a huge maze of stores selling anything and everything. From clothes, bags, CDs, lingerie, pets, shoes and so on. The assortment is just too huge to describe.

My sister had an exciting day buying and buying! Mum decided to do some foot massage here as well. Although the market closes at 2am, do note that the last train leaves Jiantan station 劍潭站 at 12mn! Not much photos were taken once we started to shop so here’s the video below instead.