Less Traveled Path

My friend Sandy and her family had raved about a Tomato Beef Knife Cut Noodle Place in Taipei. While wandering the streets of Taipei, a local had recommended this restaurant to them. It’s a hole-in-the-wall type of place and without an exact address, we only had walking directions from the metro station with a link to a map, plus a photo of her sister in front of the restaurant column like the one here.

On a quest, showing the photo to the hotel’s front desk staff (and I tried reading the Chinese in Mandarin to them first), a jewelry store lady on Zhongshan Rd. (who had only started working there in the last year), and a baby clothing store lady also on Zhongshan Rd. (who said it was in the other side of town on Boai Rd.), no one knew the exact location of this place. I felt like I was trying to solve a photo clue in the San Francisco Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt. I didn’t believe Baby Clothing Store Lady and walking down the stretch of Minsheng Rd. between Zhongshan Rd. and the Shuanglian MRT station, I spotted the sign!

The place was bigger than expected, but you could tell it was authentic because there was no English to be seen on the menu. They also had an assortment of appetizers you could grab for about $1 USD a plate:

The noodles are made by taking a mound of dough and slicing pieces off about the diameter of Japanese udon noodles, hence knife cut noodles. They were a bit more chewy than I expected, but the beef was tender and the soup was flavorful and delicious. I could have been biased because I was hungry, though.

Shan Xi Fan Xie Niu Rou Dao Xiao Mian
12 Minsheng Rd., Sec. 1
Taipei, Taiwan

Turns out this place is the second one. The original one is on Boai Rd. near the Presidential Office Building. I guess the Baby Clothing Store Lady knew what she was talking about after all.

My question is… don’t they have something like the Yellow Pages in China?

The Photos.