Ba-wan 肉圓 !

                                                                                                          What the food… this is “Ba-wan”(肉圓) 

Ba-wan

you may think of it as the “samosa” of  Taiwan,
the fillings are covered with a mix dough of rice flour, corn starch and sweet potato starch, unlike samosa it looks almost translucent after cooking. The special part about the filling is that bamboo shoots are added to match the crunchiness of the crispy cover. The sauce of this dish varies, but it always matches the Ba-wan they serve!    

Some people described Ba-wan as a giant dumpling, in fact we believed that it was invented during periods of scarcity, it was shaped un-purposely to enlarge the proportion of this meal so they can feed more. Now that people rarely starve, we do provide them in smaller size, and different way to serve.

Ba-wan are more often found at day-market than night-markets, but it is a very popular day time street side food, if you are visiting Taipei, you may find a small food-court like area outside of most of the main exit of MRT station, and you can definitely find yourself a Ba-wan there.