The ROC Government Information Office launched a food culture website Nov. 30 to promote traditional Taiwanese foods on the world stage.
“We hope to eliminate the international community’s misunderstandings of Taiwanese delicacies and for foreigners to learn more about Taiwanese culture through the website, which comes in Chinese, English, French, Japanese and Spanish versions,” GIO Minister Philip Yang said.
In related news, several world-renowned food critics—including Saul Cepeda from Spain, Kanami Egami from Japan, Jennifer Levin and John Mariani, both from the U.S., and Jean-Louis Galesne from France—arrived in Taiwan recently for a one-week food-tasting tour, the GIO said.
According to the GIO, the critics visited Ningxia Night Market and a 30-year-old Taiwanese seafood restaurant Nov. 29, with some of the foods they sampled including fried soft-shell crab, oyster omelet, rice with braised pork, stinky tofu and white pomfret rice noodle soup.
Mariani, nominated three times for the prestigious James Beard Foundation Awards, stressed that Taiwanese food culture combines many different traditions and is all inclusive.
Cepeda said the smell of stinky tofu scared him off at first, but after tasting the snack, he realized it was delicious.
Taiwanese and Spanish cuisines are quite similar, he added, with the former influenced by Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish culture.
Cepeda said Taiwanese delicacies would find their place on the world gourmet map.
The multilingual food culture website can be found at http://taiwanfoodculture.net. (HZW)
Write to Grace Kuo at morningk@mail.gio.gov.tw