Sorry for the bright light, but what you are looking at is the Waffle House of Taiwan. In so much that this is a type of restaurant that is open all night and people will go to after a late night out.
These restaurants open at around 10pm and stay open until the morning. It's not really a restaurant per se, as it doesn't serve meals, it just serves various snacks. These include dumplings, chinese buns, soy milk, dried meat, and so on. I'm going to say "and so on" cause a lot of the things i don't know what the english name would be, and they are hard to describe.
I remember my first discovery of this type of place, as being a very happy experience. It was soon after I had just gotten a motorcycle, and to practice riding, I would go out around 2am to this very long yet small street behind my apartment and just ride up and down the street. One of these late night shops was on the street, and the customers got a good look of this foreigner going back and forth on the street each night.
What caught my eye was a picture of one snack that I really like called "roast pork bun." I really like this particular bun because unlike most stuffed buns in taiwan, it is not 95% bun and 5% meat. For this bun the bread to meat ratio is perfect.
The unfortunate thing about this snack is that it usually can only be found in "dim sum" restaurants which are quite expensive. So i rushed home to email a friend trying to explain what i saw and find out what that place is and if they really sell that food i like. After getting a reply about the details, I was excited to go and give it a try.
It was quite tasty, and very inexpensive, so for the next few weeks I would venture further out on my motorcycle but always make sure to stop by this place on the way home to pick up those buns i liked. But of course as with the story of all foods I like in Taiwan, it was not meant to last. After only about a month after discovering this place, they stopped selling the roast pork buns.
It's anybody's guess why they did this, but i'm going to assume that it's because they just didn't want such a handsome guy on a sexy motorcycle there so often, making everybody else jealous.
