Taking Taiwanese Cuisine Global

The "Li Yun" chapter of The Book of Rites, in a paragraph commenting on the most important of human motivations, says something to the effect that what men take the most delight in-ranking right up there with sexual pleasure-is good food and drink. And the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw declared: "There is no love sincerer than the love of food."

Gourmandise knows no boundaries. Indeed, in recent years cooking styles have become a central element in the export of culture and the creation of a higher international profile.

Learning from the example of countries like Thailand, Korea, Japan, and Malaysia, which have all formed agencies to promote their national cooking styles, food products, and restaurants, in 2010 the ROC Executive Yuan approved a special "action plan" to internationalize Taiwan cuisine. The plan comes with a four-year budget of NT$1.1 billion, and aims to put Taiwan on the international culinary map.

The Department of Commerce of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has established a task force to promote the globalization of fine foods from Taiwan, adopting a two-track strategy of "local internationalization" and "international localization." And the Government Information Office, working with New York-based Burt Wolf Productions, has made a documentary on gourmet dining here.

What kind of cooking will satisfy locals and foreigners alike? If Taiwanese cuisine is going to go global, serious thought will have to be given to this question.

Surveys done in 2009 by the ROC Tourism Bureau show that in that year food was already the top selling point for tourists to Taiwan.

In recent years there has been very rapid growth in the food and beverage industry in Taiwan. Statistics from the MOEA indicate that in 2010 there were 102,000 food and beverage enterprises in Taiwan, generating annual revenues of NT$350 billion, an increase of 7.12% over the preceding year.

Seeing the obvious matchmaking possibilities, the Tai-pei City Government plans to apply to UNESCO in 2012 to become the world's fourth "City of Gastronomy."

UNESCO has three major programs under its jurisdiction, including World Heritage, Intangible World Heritage, and the Creative Cities Network. The latter is subdivided into seven major categories, including literature, film, music, design, and "gastronomy."

There are various indicators for each of the categories. An aspiring City of Gastronomy must meet eight criteria, including: well-developed gastronomy that is characteristic of the urban centre and/or region; a vibrant gastronomic community with numerous traditional restaurants and/or chefs; endogenous ingredients used in traditional cooking; local know-how, traditional culinary practices and methods of cooking that have survived industrial/technological advancement; traditional food markets and a traditional food industry; a tradition of hosting gastronomic festivals, awards, contests and other broadly targeted means of recognition, and more.

So far only three cities have been given the title City of Gastronomy. The only one in Asia is Chengdu-, in Si-chuan Province, mainland China, which is renowned for its spicy food utilizing the hot red peppers of the region. The other two are Po-pa-yan, Columbia, with a centuries-old gastronomic tradition that has been passed along orally and is still widely practiced and nurtured, and Oster-sand, Sweden, cited by UNESCO for (among other things) its "clean air and fresh water, long-lasting culinary tradition, and unique gastronomic culture based on locally produced sustainable food from a large number of organic producers." In Taipei, because of the enormous diversity of cooking styles, it is not so easy to identify a single obvious and prominent defining characteristic.

Given stiff competition from other Asian cities that intend to apply for the -UNESCO appellation-such as Shang-hai, Bei-jing, Fu-zhou, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Osaka-how is Tai-pei going to stand out from the crowd?

Under a preliminary taxonomy of Taiwan's food phyla by culinary experts and people in the business, Taiwan cuisine can be roughly divided into seven major categories: composite Chinese cuisine, Taiwanese cuisine, Taiwanese-style seafood, Hakka cuisine, Aboriginal cuisine, Taiwanese street-stall and night-market foods, and desserts or sweets. Which ones should be considered the "meat of the order"? Which are likely to have the greatest international appeal?

Each xiaolongbao dumpling has exactly 18 folds, a symbol of Din Tai Fung's dedication to craftsmanship and quality.

Taiwan's people have always enjoyed a thriving culture of street-stall and night-market foods, whose repute has seemed to reach new highs in the last few years with the help of films like Au Revoir Taipei and Night Market Hero. Indeed, night markets are "can't-miss" attractions on the itineraries of foreigners visiting our island. But while street-stall and night-market offerings-known collectively as "little eats" (xiao-chi) in Chinese-are authentic, integral parts of daily life for ordinary Taiwanese, there is the suspicion that they may be too "lacking in refinement" to be proper candidates to push into the international limelight.

In 2007, the Department of Commerce conducted its first-ever survey to see which local foods foreigners like most. First the Tourism Bureau, the International Trade Institute, and experts nominated 27 types of "little eats" and 34 more formal "table dishes"; then these were whittled down to 10 of the former and 15 of the latter via an online poll of Taiwanese. Foreigners in Taiwan (mainly students and businesspeople) were then invited to try the foods and vote for their faves. When all was said and done, the top three "little eats" were o-a-zen (蚵仔煎/oyster omelet), pearl milk tea, and yansu chicken (battered deep-fried chicken pieces with salt, pepper, and other spices), while the top "table dishes" were tsai-bo-neng (菜脯蛋/dried-radish-and-egg frittata), gongbao jiding (宮保雞丁/kungpao chicken), and wok-fried beef with scallions. Dishes with ingredients that are alien to most foreign kitchens, such as pig-intestine-and-pig-blood stew, despite rating highly with locals, failed to find much favor with visitors.

It must have been a jaw-dropper to many Taiwanese to hear that dried-radish-and-egg frittata finished at the head of the "table dish" hit parade. But Sarah Chen, a reporter for the United Daily News who has been on the gastronomy beat for over a decade now, says that it not only has great local authenticity, it is a touchstone for the quality of any restaurant specializing in Taiwanese cuisine. "This simple homespun dish, which is exactly the type of cooking you would get from Mom, often makes Taiwanese who are far from home go teary-eyed with nostalgia," she opines. The trick to this frittata is that it has to be a little crunchy outside (golden brown, even slightly burnt, around the edges) and soft and chewy inside, with the radish spread evenly throughout the egg, and a crisp, clean aroma. "If a Taiwanese-style restaurant can't even get this right, then you know there's not much hope for the fancier dishes later on."

Shin Yeh 101 (facing page), located on the 85th floor of the Taipei 101 building, specializes in high-end Taiwanese cuisine, satisfying both the eye and the appetite. Pictured on this page (clockwise from top left) are braised soft-shell turtle with chicken and pork stomach, mullet roe with lily, crab curry, and shrimp "sandwich."

While dried-radish-and-egg frittata may have "real down-home Taiwanese cookin'" written all over it, it would be a very long stretch to call it "the representative dish" of Taiwan cuisine. It's only a small part of a much richer tapestry.

Alfred Chen, chairman of the Association for Promotion of the Internationalization of Taiwan Cuisine, points out that there is a huge variety of great food in Taiwan, and in his view there are at least 20 dishes that have a good shot at making any list of foods worthy of global attention.

Not surprisingly, then, choosing just a few flagship dishes to represent our island is proving to be quite a headache.

Gourmet and food critic Louis Liang advises us that the definition of fine cuisine can be broad or narrow. A narrow definition would include dishes that one favors oneself, though these might prove hard to swallow for others. For example, Taiwanese love oyster omelets, but some foreigners think they "have the same gooey texture as mucus."

A broad definition, says Liang, would encompass foods that are praised by locals and foreigners, young and old alike. Just look at the Din Tai Fung restaurant-loved by locals, it is lavished with praise by foreigners as well.

"The most urgent task is to develop fine cuisine that is internationally recognized as such-we can't just keep our heads down in our own plates pleasing our own palates," says Liang.

"You can't just think about what you yourself want-just because you like something that doesn't mean other people will find it acceptable," avers gourmet Ann Hu. When foreigners go to Chinese restaurants, they always want to order sweet and sour meat, like sweet and sour pork, because that is the taste they like.

Lifestyle and food expert Lulu Han shares these views. She says that for everyday needs chefs can stick to making local favorites, but if you want to use cuisine to communicate with the world, then you have to have some Taiwanese dishes that can talk the international lingo. "All foods in Taiwan can speak Taiwanese and Mandarin Chinese, but you've got to have at least some that speak English."

Take "little eats" for instance. A reporter relates that he has often been taken by Taiwanese hosts to eat at night markets, but because there is no overall planning or information available, they end up eating virtually at random-first shishkebabs, then broiled-lamb sandwiches, then lu-wei, followed by okonomiyaki... until their heads are spinning and they have no idea which of the things they have consumed are authentically Taiwanese.

Another point to consider in globalizing food is to make sure everybody is working from the same vocabulary. There has never been a unified system for translating the names of foods from Taiwan. "Translated menus look like they have no pedigree, no pride," opines gourmet and writer Yeh Yi-lan. The internationally accepted approach is to render food names phonetically. For example, everybody in the world uses the term "sushi." Only when the names of Taiwanese dishes are rectified will Taiwan be able to claim cuisine of its very own.

Shin Yeh 101 (facing page), located on the 85th floor of the Taipei 101 building, specializes in high-end Taiwanese cuisine, satisfying both the eye and the appetite. Pictured on this page (clockwise from top left) are braised soft-shell turtle with chicken and pork stomach, mullet roe with lily, crab curry, and shrimp "sandwich."

In other words, if Taiwan cuisine is going to go global, it will have to first learn how to communicate in a global language.

Lulu Han has written that most of the foods that have made it onto CNN's travel website are convenient fast foods, such as Massaman curry from Thailand or sushi from Japan, and are mostly representative regional foods whose flavors have been moderated and standardized, and whose aesthetic presentation has been upgraded. The level of popularity is also connected to the typical tourist's travel experience.

Louis Liang, one of whose hats is as special culinary ambassador of -Chengdu, a UN City of Gastronomy, points to the example of that city. Si-chuan, of which Chengdu is the provincial capital, is famous for its hot red peppers, but the spicy food has had to be toned down to conform to international tastes-it can't be as oily, salty, or spicy as the locals are accustomed to.

Flavors can be slightly smoothed out to find a wider audience, but the cultural underpinnings must be preserved. And what "cultural underpinnings" would have to be preserved when internationalizing Taiwanese cuisine?

Yeh Yi-lan says that the most basic concept of Taiwanese cooking is that ingredients must all be wok-fried together over a high flame, or a fish must be steamed whole, for the flavor to be right. White rice is the centerpiece of every meal, and the dishes are just there to make the rice go down better. Therefore Chinese food shouldn't be served in courses one after another, but the whole table should be packed with all the dishes side by side. "That's the most unforgettable and appealing quality of dining in Taiwan."

Louis Liang adds that you can make internationalized cuisine that nevertheless stays within tradition by using old-fashioned ingredients but preparing them in new ways. He illustrates his point with beef and tofu. Though beef is more expensive than tofu, in his opinion the latter has actually got more history, culture, and street cred behind it, not to mention being healthier. Novel ways of cooking it up could completely change the status that people habitually assign to it.

Fragrant braised pork on steaming white rice-it doesn't get any more "down-home Taiwanese" than this! The photo was taken at a branch of the Formosa Chang restaurant chain.

In promoting Taiwanese food, the most immediate marketing targets are tourists.

When you look at the fact that most tourists leave talking only about how much they enjoyed Taiwan's "little eats," you wonder if maybe we haven't been as good hosts as we could have been. Evergreen Restaurant general manager Shih Chien-fa says this especially applies to tour groups from mainland China, a line of business in which competition is intense and operators thus don't dare charge very much for their tours. To save on expenses, the operators almost all provide only simple and basic kinds of meals. No wonder, he says, that visitors to Taiwan usually leave with the impression that "there's nothing good to eat" or "you can get by just as well on street-stall and night-market food."

Ann Hu advises that the only way to attract more tourists to Taiwan is to get internationally famous names to open restaurants here. "No matter how well the local Taiwanese food is made, if there are no elite-level Western restaurants, foreigners still aren't going to come here." After a couple days eating Taiwan food, foreigners will start getting homesick for their native cuisines, and we have to learn to respect people's preferences, and give them a complete range of options.

Besides building up word of mouth through tourists, Ann Hu suggests that the government should create rewards or incentives for private restaurants or food manufacturers to invite internationally recognized chefs, gourmets, and food media to Taiwan, and then the true face of Taiwanese cuisine can be transmitted abroad though them.

Shin Yeh 101 (facing page), located on the 85th floor of the Taipei 101 building, specializes in high-end Taiwanese cuisine, satisfying both the eye and the appetite. Pictured on this page (clockwise from top left) are braised soft-shell turtle with chicken and pork stomach, mullet roe with lily, crab curry, and shrimp "sandwich."

Although internationalizing local cuisine has to start at home with foreigners who come to visit, you also have to take it on the road and sell it overseas.

"The only way people are going to really find out how great the culinary arts are in Taiwan is for chefs to go abroad and compete," says Shih Chien-fa, who is also the director of the Chinese Gourmet Association. He says the promotion of Taiwanese cuisine should be seen as a team sport, not an individual sport. In recent years Taiwan chefs have begun organizing teams to take part in international competitions. In 2004, Shih himself led a group to Singapore that won the overall first prize.

Shih, who has several times been sponsored by the Tourism Bureau and the Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission to demonstrate his skills abroad, once created a meal for 50 tables of guests at the Taipei Cultural Center in New York, including at least a dozen ambassadors from various countries. He says that the event was tremendously successful as a marketing effort.

Besides the government inviting leading chefs abroad to promote Taiwanese food, an even more effective way to enlarge the geographic presence of Taiwan cuisine is for the private sector to cross over into foreign markets.

Following in the footsteps of Din Tai Fung, Taiwan's leading brand name in haute cuisine, which long ago moved into mainland China, six years ago Shin Yeh set up shop in Beijing and began selling five-star Taiwanese cuisine.

Shin Yeh Restaurant Group executive director Lee Hung-chun says that 65% of the Taiwanese dishes served at the Beijing Shin Yeh are the same as in Taiwan, and the flavor is authentic and unadulterated. To make sure of that, all of their sauces and spices are imported from Taiwan.

However, your typical Beijing diner favors food with heavier flavors than his counterpart in Taiwan, and what a Taiwanese finds to be perfect is apt to be considered "bland" by a Beijinger. Shin Yeh held extensive internal discussions about this very problem, and in the end they decided to retain the authentic Taiwanese flavors but to provide diners with two additional types of dipping sauces, so they could adjust the flavor to their own tastes.

Reflecting on the case of Thailand, which currently boasts over 12,000 restaurants serving its national cuisine overseas, and Korea, with over 10,000, if you want to internationalize Taiwan cooking, then you have to adopt the idea that there should be some kind of product that will carry the major part of the load.

Lulu Han says that you can't just going around saying over and over that Taiwanese food in general is delicious, you've got to let tourists discover, in an international language they will understand, that if you come to Taiwan, there are certain dishes you absolutely must try! If there are these core dishes, and they leave a deep impression in the minds and on the taste buds of visitors, there won't be any difficulties applying for recognition as a "City of Gastronomy" or making it on to international fine dining lists!

Shin Yeh 101 (facing page), located on the 85th floor of the Taipei 101 building, specializes in high-end Taiwanese cuisine, satisfying both the eye and the appetite. Pictured on this page (clockwise from top left) are braised soft-shell turtle with chicken and pork stomach, mullet roe with lily, crab curry, and shrimp "sandwich."