Shan Ding Lu

We wandered down to the Dong Gang fish markets on a Sunday recently. This is a wonderful place to see the huge variety of fish and sea animals eaten in Taiwan. I have often said that the 10 best dinners I’ve ever had were here in Taiwan. And these would all have been seafood. For some reason, the Taiwanese just know how to prepare seafood.

There is a seafood restaurant we frequent in Dong Gang that does seafood particularly well. Here is a picture of the remnants of one such meal. Miso fish soup, sashimi, fried squid, chili vegetable seashells. All followed by fruit and toffee taro to make it an authentic Taiwan meal.

After filling ourselves on all manner of fish we went along to the markets to buy a load to take home.
There was a school of chilled tuna and large open water fish being cleaned and sliced into sashimi. I now know where the world’s fish stocks are going. You can’t remove this volume of fish from the oceans without leaving a hole.

The market proper has store after store that specialize in every type of swimming, crawling, floating and sinking seafood you could image.

And to pick the eyes out of the market is this store specializing in eyes. A handful each.

An army of mud crabs. If they could only break their straw shackles they could start a militant marine mutiny.

No fish is too small, oddly shaped or strangely coloured that it can’t be converted into something delicious.

The fish egg vendor and her daughter.

And all so fresh.

Tags: Around Da Liao //