Gobble, gobble, on the double. For the majority of office employees in Taipei, lunch is best kept a brief affair. While the average lunch hour lasts from noon to one-thirty, eating takes up as little time as possible. Even senior managers rarely make use of the executive privilege of banqueting at high noon.
What is behind this reluctance to enjoy a leisurely lunch? Eight out of ten it's the noontime nap, an essential part of a working day for office employees. "I can really feel the difference if I take a long lunch two days in a row and miss my nap," says a government employee. ''I'm used to it. If I don't take it, I don't feel well." Other employees in the private and public sectors would agree. In offices across town, lights out is at twelve-thirty. By that time lunch boxes have already been put away and, as if on cue, everyone in the room throws a jacket or sweater over their shoulders and hunches over their desks. Employees in some of the more old-fashioned offices take their naps so seriously that they store folding cots and drag them out after lunch.
So a hurried lunch it has to be. And Taipei could never be short of eating places for a quick, inexpensive bite. There are noodle restaurants that serve fried noodles, cold noodles, or soup with noodles. Off to the side is a glass shelf containing a range of side dishes, from eggplant cooked in soy sauce and vinegar to fine-sliced boiled pig's ears. There are steamed dumpling and bun places, and places that serve roast duck, goose, chicken, or pork with rice and vegetables. Other restaurants spread a wide selection of dishes on the counter, each with its own price. There are also coffee shops with set meals closed by a cup of coffee made from fresh-ground beans, the counters in basements of department stores, the Japanese-style curry rice and steak-and salad houses, and of course, Colonel Sanders and the rest of the fast-food bunch. Average price for these meals is US$4.50, the cost of a six-pack of Diet Coke at the corner convenience store.
Another choice is eating at the desk out of a lunch box, or pien tang, from home. The typical lunch box is a small and shallow metal container, slightly longer than a person's hand, with clasps on either end. It is prepared in the mornings and often contains leftovers from last night's dinner, and a fried or boiled egg. Vegetables are oftentimes left out because they overcook and become limp and turn yellow-green in the aluminum warming ovens that most offices install in their kitchens. But preparing lunch at home is turning into an unnecessary inconvenience. The walking-distance availability of cheap and hot meals even in the most fashionable business districts is seeing to it that leftover lunches packed by loving hands will soon be a thing of the past.
Bless the entrepreneurial spirit that brought street food trucks and the two- wheeled aluminum carts to alleys and street comers near office buildings. Some have folding tables and stools strapped to their sides. They are set on the sidewalk or on the street, staking claim to territory and specialty. The food stands are excellent examples of good use of space. They come equipped with smoke vents, gas stoves fed by a gas canister through a rubber hose, and loads of styrofoam containers, plastic utensils, and plastic bags. The sight of a food stand in operation is enough to thrill a pyromaniac, and to make health officials and environmentalists cringe.
Food vendors are required by law to obtain operating licenses. But the speed with which they expertly pack up and bolt when they spot a policeman is evidence that few of the food stands bother with licenses. Fines and shutdowns are technically enforceable, though not often practiced. Everyone understands that they will be back. The street stand is a popular family business. One often hears about office employees who decided to forsake job, salary, and nap to open up a food stand with their spouses; or about the university graduates who opted for careers on food street rather than climb the corporate ladder.
In fact, over a hundred food carts are often packed into alleys near places where students congregate. For example, on Nanyang Street in central Taipei, there is hardly any room left between the parked motorcycles, the food carts, and the makeshift stands. Cram schools for high school and university entrance exams as well as English-language schools line both sides of this street. But employees from surrounding offices patronize these carts as well—for breakfast, for lunch, and for a snack before facing the traffic going home. Common fare is an invigorating serving of fried fermented bean curd slices, aptly called chou toufu, or stinky bean curd. Lunch, however, is when business is busiest and liveliest.
Running a food stand does seem like a simple operation, and as the brisk exchange of money indicates, it is also profitable. The meals are simple and can be prepared in advance. Noodles are redunked in boiling water, soups are kept simmering, and fried foods are refried. Food turnover is fast. Best of all, high rents are out of the picture. Except for the payoff to that collector from the friendly neighborhood gang and to the shopkeepers for allowing stands to set up in front of their stores.
Office workers who prefer to eat at their desks order styrofoam lunch boxes which, like the metal containers from home, are also called pien tang. And no one packs a lunch quite like the takeaway food stands. The husband-and-wife team who pass out the lunch boxes from the back of a truck or out of a pushcart are used to catering to lots of people. The service is always pleasant. The wife sets up the boxes in assembly line fashion, and fills them. The husband does the frying and the packing, deftly snapping a rubber band around the box and sliding it into a plastic bag, followed by chopsticks and sometimes a small yoghurt drink. And soon, the wife's belt bag is bulging with crushed bills.
Office workers crowd around these food stands, saying "I want pork" or "Three chickens and one pork over here" and "No hot sauce for me." There's hardly any shoving, but quite a bit of tongue clicking and sighing. Patience is a virtue among hungry or busy office workers, who want their lunches and those of their co-workers—now. But once their turn comes up, a boxed lunch is packed and ready to go in less than the time it takes to decide between a double cheeseburger or a big Mac with fries.
Yours with speed and efficient—a vendor fills up rows of lunch boxes in anticipation of the rush.
A boxed lunch from a food stand rarely costs more than US$2, which in Taipei buys only a small bowl of spicy beef noodles, with hardly any beef, at a hole in the wall. Inside the box is a generous piece of pork or a chicken leg marinated in soy sauce and spices before it is deep fried. It comes with steamed rice, braised green leafy vegetables, cooked fermented soy beans or chopped preserved radish spiced with red peppers to tease the appetite, and a shelled egg stewed in soy sauce-flavored pork stock. But wait, there's more. Add another two dollars and the lunch box will also include a sausage or a steamed prawn, fish fried in batter, another choice of vegetable, noodles, plus soup, and fruit or pudding for dessert. Ah, grease heaven, and definitely better than a tuna fish sandwich or leftovers from last night's dinner.
Food carts also serve eat-in lunches. Like any restaurant, they often have a regular clientele, and sometimes customers patronize the same stall for several years. The proprietors of a food cart on Hochiang Street, in the vicinity of several hotels and a university, have become familiar with some of the office workers in the neighborhood. Says the owner, "We rely on our regular customers. How would we go about getting new business any way?"
This particular stall features Taiwanese snack foods, such as oyster soup, rice noodles, and a selection of appetizers including boiled meats and innards, fish balls on a stick, and braised chicken feet with long, threatening nails. Other street stands may offer largely the same selection, but each has its specialty, be it rice noodles in squid stew, fried noodles, deep-fried bean curd, pork liver soup, braised vegetables, fruit, and in the summer, bowls of shaved ice with a choice of toppings. In short, the food carts cover the range from appetizer to soup to dessert.
The work can be no less grueling or time-consuming than in any other restaurant. According to a woman who runs a food stand on Hochiang Street with her sister, they work sixteen-hour days, Monday to Saturday. The sisters are back from the market by seven in the morning, and they cook the food at home before venturing out to their stand, which is locked and parked in front of a bakery.
Some street stands offer uniquely delectable food, and their dishes can really put some established restaurants to shame. But health officials have repeatedly advised the public against frequenting the stalls. The food is left out for several hours, and their open-air ambience includes dust and fuel exhaust emissions from the cars, motorcycles, and buses that pass by. True, hygiene standards are not up to snuff. The food stalls are regarded with great suspicion as carriers of hepatitis and all sorts of gastric diseases. It is all too common to see proprietors squat by the roadside and wash raw foods and rinse utensils in wide, worn-out plastic basins filled with cold water.
Like restaurants, food stands can be come famous. A partner at a management consulting firm patronizes a stall that sells a variety of cold noodles and is a five-minute taxi ride away from her office. She says, "Most cold noodle vendors just serve sesame noodles. But this stand is well-known for its variety." She also lists several stalls around Taipei and in the suburbs that she has heard about. One is famous for squid noodles, another for pig's feet, and yet another for hsueh hua ping. Translated as snow flower ice, the Chinese version of a snow-cone comes with a choice of toppings, from red beans to corn kernels to a quivering raw egg.
According to the consultant, the famous stalls serve a regular clientele. "But," she says, "on holidays, people do travel just to tryout a certain food stall" One writer tells of a food stand that did such good business serving boiled noodles with oysters that its owners rented the shop space behind where the cart stood—and abandoned the cart.
Not to be outmaneuvered by the non-rent-paying, non-tax-paying vendors, there are small restaurants that also specialize in styrofoam takeouts, and some make a good living out of delivering lunch boxes to neighboring offices alone. Especially in alleys and on streets where food carts are numerous, sidewalks have become a battleground for street-style cuisine. Restaurants take over the sidewalks as well, before vendors can block their entrance and their visibility. They park their refrigerators outside, and sometimes a beat-up television set as well. And often, customers prefer to eat at the tables on the sidewalk, not minding the people winding their way down the sidewalk and bumping their elbows.
Every now and then, the city government threatens to ban food carts and force the restaurants back indoors. And there have been suggestions that Taipei do as Singapore has done: round up the carts and put them in food centers. But until that time, they will continue to serve up food that may not be the stuff of dreams, but nevertheless quick, satisfying preludes to nap time.