Yong He Soy Milk King - Taipei

Is it Called Breakfast at 11pm?
I don't know, but I had an immediate affinity for Yong He - they serve freshly made breafkast food deep into the night.  It didn't hurt that I was fighting jetlag and losing - breakfast at night was making perfect sense.  What you see below is an amazing concoction - it's a thin egg and scallion crepe wrapped around two deep-fried dough sticks.  If I'm not mistaken (and I easily could be) that would be a dan bing wrapped around two you tiao.  Someone from Taiwan, help me out with my probably poor interpretation, please.

Any great place knows to make the food as close to the sidewalk as possible - make a little show of it.  This is what you see walking past Yong He.  A whole crew kneading and cutting dough and frying you tiao.  That's all this wannabe reporter needs to see.  Things like this always stop me dead in my tracks.  They fry their you tiao a bit extra.  When I bit down they crunched and crackled audibly, making this jetlag breakfast sandwich extra special. 

A few days later we returned to try something else.  First on the list was something called a shao bing you tiao, which I'd describe as deep-fried dough sticks wrapped in a flakey sesame seed encrusted flatbread.  So, in other words it's a bread sandwich - not too appealing at first blush.  How wrong I was, this was absolutely delicious.  It makes no sense whatsoever but I became quickly enamored of this and downed most of it quickly.

Just then Dodo peered up at the menu and got all excited.  She said "ok, now let's get another one - they have one just like the last one with the egg and scallion crepe added: a shao bing you tiao lai dan." My mind started to spin - the bread in bread AND some egg and scallion?  DO IT!!!  However, in a strange case of subtraction by addition - the sandwich was less tasty with the egg crepe.  It muted the flakiness of the flatbread and masked the sesame taste without adding much.  In the end, the shao bing you tiao was the winner.

I didn't take any photos of the soybean milk - their specialty.  Why?  Well, it just looks like a cup of milk - not visually interesting.  I've recently taken a liking to soybean milk - and whereas I'm no expert, theirs was silky smooth and delicious.  Dodo and I munched quietly at our table, happy to have hit on a winner in Taipei on our fist night.

102 Flushing Nan Lu, Section 2
Taipei

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