Yummy Tako Yaki - 10/10!you know i was looking through some of my old pictures the other day and came across this baby. this was from last year on my trip to taipei. i stayed at a hotel right above the mrt underpass. the underpass is cool. it's like full of shops and restaurants and stuff like that, kind of a little like citilink but slightly more run down.
anyway, i was walking along the underpass one day and i came across this tiny little store, probably abour 8m-5m, and i was just walking pass it when i noticed that the two girls there were cooking something incredibly familiar. tako yaki. now tako yaki kind of has a nostalgic soft spot in my heart. i remember when tako pachi first came out in singapore (i think i was about 12), i would go to bugis junction so often just to eat it. originally, i my favorite was the octupus. but soon i started liking the ham and cheese one too. the cheese really gives it a nice creamy, and slightly salty texture to the tako pachi. its especially great with all the mayo on it.
but after a few years tako pachi kind of got a little old and passé and thus i stopped going there so often. but i never fail to introduce it to friends who drop by in singapore. and somehow they never fail to like it. so this tako yaki was just a little hole in the wall. its a tiny store. it didn't seem like a chain or franchise. additionally, the tako yaki itself didn't look all too appealing. the balls aren't as fluffy and perfectly round like the ones in singapore. they don't look as good (but then again, they don't look so mass produced either). but being the really curious foodie that i am, i decided to just try a couple.
we took our seats on these little short bar stools along the counter, just like how you would eat curry rice in a little shop in japan. so we asked them whats on the menu. i bet they thought we were total retards because the only thing on the menu was the octupus tako yaki, and they didn't have any other selection. so i was like cool, i'll get some. so they came in 6 or 12 (i ate 2 already in the picture) and i decided to get 6. they make ours fresh and we had to wait about 5 minutes before it came out. they laid it on a little dish and drizzled some special wasabi sauce on the side and another type of orange colored sauce on top of it, along with the standard fish flakes.
i took my first bite, WOW. fantastic. really really good. i don't want to overemphasize the point, but wayyyy better than the ones at tako pachi. it doesn't look as good, but it tastes much much better. the dough is really perfectly soft, and the octupus filling is nice and chewy, but not overly so like the tako pachi here. but the orange sauce on top is fabulous. and with a light dip of the wasabi sauce, it really hits the spot. a testament to this; d hates tako pachi, but after a few times i convinced her to try this one because it was so good. and she ended up being able to finish all 6 herself! i ended up going back a few more times and ate over 30 balls the course of my trip. we even brought some back to the hotel. i wish they had something just as good here.
anyway, for those of you who are going to taipei, i don't have the exact location, but its somewhere along the beginning of the underpass at Caesar Park Hotel, Taipei. go down the stairs next to the hotel and you'll see it pretty quick :) enjoy-
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