The Soy Milk King

One of the problems we faced with staying in Ximending area was the difficulty to find food in the morning. Being an area that is largely dominated by the evening and night crowds, Ximending is pretty quiet before noon. We had a couple of our morning fixes at Ay Chung Rice Noodles, but most street food stalls would still be closed otherwise. So during one morning, we felt adventurous and took the train to the famed Yong He Soy Milk King shop located in Daan. This shop apparently opens 24/7, so it was perfect for us. Again, this was a shop that did not have an English sign board, so we had to pay close attention to the address to make sure we didn’t end up at the wrong place. Thankfully, the big red sign board was striking enough to catch our attention from far.

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Hot soy milk

Since we’re in a soy milk king shop, we had to order their soy milk without question. To our surprise, there was actually a savoury version of the soy milk, served with dried shrimps! Adventurous as we were, we didn’t quite like the idea of having salty soy milk which also looked lumpy due to the coagulated milk within. We played safe and ordered the sweet version, served hot. It was concentrated, smooth and very aromatic. It was also perfect to be eaten with their freshly fried you tiao or Chinese crullers. Yum!

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Price list – everything was cheap!

Thick and aromatic hot soy milk (dou jiang)

Crispy Chinese crullers

There was always a constant queue of people at the shop front who were waiting for their takeaway snacks. Some of the items we observed people buying were Egg crepes, Rice rolls wrapped around different fillings and Fried pan cake. We tried the fried pan cake on its own, but it turned out to be bland, although the pastry was light and flaky. It was later that we found out that we’re supposed to wrap the pan cake around various fillings of our choice, such as an omelette, meat floss, or even around a Chinese cruller!

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Fried pan cake (shao bing)

The Xiao Long Bao was tempting too, since we were looking for something warm on the chilly morning. They turned out to be quite average because we found the dumplings to be poorly wrapped, with some of them having torn skin. We also thought they were slightly over-steamed, but they did do the job of keeping our tummies warm that morning.

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Dumplings / Xiao long bao

All things considered, we did enjoy the simple breakfast of soy milk with Chinese crullers, which surprisingly kept us full for quite a while. Best of all, everything was around NTD15-25 (RM1.50-2.50) each, except for the Xiao Long Bao at NTD50, so we stuffed ourselves silly for just over NTD100 in total. If you’re out of ideas on where to have breakfast in Taipei, give Yong He Soy Milk King a shot.

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