After meeting tonight I was invited to by a young brother, Wen Dixiong, to join him and some brothers for a "midnight snack" as he called it in English. I had to think about that expression for a minute, I guess after dinner we Americans just say "Do you want to go get something to eat?" We don't have a name for a meal at 10pm. So we walked exactly one block, crossed the narrow street, and walked into a little shop. It turns out this meal is called "dessert" in English. The shop looks like an ice-cream shop, with stainless steel and the curved glass shield between the customer and the big buckets of chilled delicacies. Where you point to things by tapping on the glass, and the server says "This one?" No the one closer to you. "This one?" Just to the right of that one. "Yeah two scoops of that please." Everything in the shop had that white color too, I think the server wore white too... as ice cream servers should. But it wasn't ice cream. I never thought it was ice cream, despite my description of the shop. You must learn not to expect certain types of food here or the disappointment will prevent you from enjoying food that might you might actually like. I half expected this food though, I've seen pictures of it in windows, but I'm not sure I can describe it. I'll try. It's served chilled or hot, it's like pudding, but it's not dairy, and it has beans in it. It's sweet, but barely. There are many varieties, buckets, of the "pudding" ranging in color from white to dark brown, some of it looks like chocolate Jello, if there is such a thing. There are buckets of what looks exactly like white pinto beans, and brown too. Thankfully the brother I walked with knew exactly what he wanted and directed the server to build him a bowl of this monochromatic pudding/Jello/bean soup. I say "thankfully" because all I had to say to the server was "Yiyang" (with means "the same") and point to brother Wen. Who knows what bizarre combinations I would have directed her to assemble for me, or how it would have tasted? I'm happy to say that my dessert was a success. Judging by their dessert foods and snacks the Taiwanese people are not as obsessed with sugar as Americans are, sometimes this is disappointing. But my taste buds seem to be adapting to the merely slightly sweet dessert foods of Taipei. I wonder if American food will taste strange to me after awhile. Now if only I had written down what he ordered I could have ordered it in the future. I guess I'll just have to play the pointing and guessing game instead. (edit 308) Permalink