Taiwan is one of those rare cycling destinations where the food is a real reason to come back. Every tour we run produces the same end-of-week conversation. Not “the climbs were brilliant” or “the descents were wild”, although both are true, but “we should have planned a third dinner around that restaurant in Ruisui.” Taiwan cycling food sits in its own category. It is cheap, it is varied, it is everywhere, and almost all of it is geared towards exactly the calories you need after a hard day in the saddle.
This guide is for cyclists planning a trip to Taiwan and wondering what they will actually eat. The roadside snacks that work mid-ride. The lunch stops worth detouring for. The dinners that win the week. And a few drinks worth riding for too.
Why Taiwan Cycling Food Is Different
Taiwanese food sits in its own category for a specific historical reason. After 1949, around two million refugees from across mainland China settled in Taiwan, bringing recipes from every region from Xinjiang to Sichuan to Yunnan. They arrived in a place that already had Japanese culinary influence from the colonial period (1895 to 1945) and indigenous traditions going back thousands of years. The result is a fusion you do not find anywhere else. A breakfast of soy milk and youtiao at a Shanghai-style stall, a Hakka beef noodle bowl for lunch, and Japanese-influenced sashimi for dinner is a normal day on tour.
For cyclists this works out brilliantly. Carb-heavy noodles, dumplings and rice dishes are everywhere. Convenience stores are densely spaced and stock genuine food, not the junk-only selection you sometimes see in the equivalent stores elsewhere in the world. Family-run restaurants in small towns will plate up a hot, fresh meal for the price of a coffee back home. And hygiene standards by Asian cycling-tourism standards are strict. Tap water is safe to drink in cities. We have run hundreds of tours over a decade and food poisoning is so rare we cannot remember the last time a guest got hit.
The Best Cycling Snacks for the Road
The on-bike food scene in Taiwan is as good as anywhere we ride.
The petrol station zongzi at Dayuling. Five kilometres below the turning at Dayuling on the Taiwan KOM route there is a petrol station selling the best zongzi (sticky rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaf) anywhere on the island. We are not exaggerating. People drive up to the top of the central mountain range just to buy zongzi from this petrol station. After 70km of climbing, the combination of warm rice, peanut, fatty pork and savoury seasoning unwrapped from a bamboo leaf at 2,500m is one of the great moments of the trip. Stop, even if you are racing the light.
The soy duck egg in Shiding. On the eastern approach out of Taipei, just before the 106 junction in Shiding, a tiny stall by the side of the road sells what locals know to be the best soy duck eggs in Taiwan. They are soft-boiled in soy and spice, served cold, and they are a perfect mid-ride hit of protein and salt. About the size of a chicken egg but with twice the umami. Worth detouring for.
7-Eleven and FamilyMart. Taiwan has something like 13,000 convenience stores on the island, which works out at one for every 1,800 people. They are open 24 hours, they sell hot food (rice balls, onigiri, dumplings, soup, hot drinks) along with the usual sports drinks and bananas, and they have clean toilets. On a long ride day in Taiwan you will pass one every 5 to 10 kilometres outside the high mountains. They are the most reliable refuel option you have.
A note on Tianxiang on the KOM route: the 7-Eleven there is the only one between sea level and Dayuling, but it sells out of almost everything by mid-morning. Do not plan to restock in Tianxiang. The petrol station zongzi at Dayuling is the next reliable food on that climb.
Roadside stalls and fruit stands. Below the tropic of cancer along the Pacific east coast, the roadsides are dotted with fruit stands selling pineapples, mangoes, wax apples and whatever else is in season. Riders new to Taiwan tend to underrate fresh fruit as cycling food. Do not. A pineapple wedge mid-climb in 28-degree heat is the best thing on the bike.
Lunch Stops Worth Riding For
Lunch on a Taiwan cycling tour rarely happens at a chain. We almost always pull into a small family-run restaurant at the front of someone’s home, eat for 30 minutes, and ride out 200 NTD lighter (about £5 / US$6).
A few lunch stops are good enough to plan a route around.
Nanshan, on the climb up to Wuling Pass. About 50km into the climb from the Yilan Valley, a small village with a single restaurant doing one of the best bowls of noodle soup in Taiwan. Hand-pulled noodles, slow-braised beef, fresh greens. After 1,000m of climbing it is exactly what you want.
Chenggong, on the east coast. Chenggong is a small fishing town between Taitung and Hualien, and it specialises in the freshest swordfish sashimi anywhere in Asia. The fish lands at the harbour in the morning and is on a plate in the town by lunchtime. We always overnight in Chenggong on the east coast leg of our tours, in part because the sashimi-and-rice lunch is a good enough reason to break the route there.
Ruisui, in the Rift Valley. Halfway up the inland route from Taitung to Hualien, Ruisui has a restaurant that is genuinely our favourite anywhere in Taiwan. We will not name it here because the owner does not speak English and we want to keep the table free for our groups, but if you are riding with us the route runs through it.
The BBQ sausage stall at Sun Moon Lake. Skip the underwhelming street food at Ita Thao and Shuishe. The best lunch on the Sun Moon Lake loop is a charcoal-grilled Chinese sausage from the stall outside Xuan Zang Temple. A second option is a small waterfront restaurant just outside Yuchi. Both are honest, fresh, and a fraction of the tourist-trap prices around the lake itself.
Mountain chicken in Jiaoxi. If you are riding the northern loop out of Taipei, Jiaoxi at the bottom of the Yilan Valley descent is famous for “mountain chicken”: whole chickens roasted to crispy perfection over a wood-burning tandoor-style oven. The skin shatters, the meat falls apart, and after a long descent it is the kind of post-ride food that ends a day well.
Dinner: Family Restaurants and Night Markets
Taiwan dinners on a cycling tour are usually one of two flavours.
The first is a quiet, sit-down meal at a small family restaurant. The kind of place with no English menu, plastic stools, and food coming out of a kitchen run by one or two people. A typical group dinner runs to four or five shared dishes plus rice and is over in an hour. Beef noodle soup, three-cup chicken (a Taiwanese classic with rice wine, soy and basil), oyster omelette, sautéed sweet potato leaves, soup dumplings and stir-fried morning glory all feature. We recommend ordering more than you think you need; portions are smaller than at a Chinese-American restaurant and prices are low enough that nobody minds the leftovers.
The second is a night market run. Almost every town in Taiwan has one. Raohe and Liaoning Street in Taipei. The lanes around Hengchun in Kenting. Fengjia in Taichung. They are loud, lit-up, and stuffed with stalls doing one or two dishes each at a level you will not find in a sit-down restaurant. Specifics worth chasing:
- Soup dumplings (xiaolongbao) at any market. The original Din Tai Fung in Taipei is worth the detour if your route runs through Xinyi.
- Beef noodle soup (niu rou mian). Taiwan’s de facto national dish.
- Scallion pancakes (cong you bing). Fried, crispy, a dollar each.
- Ba wan (Taiwanese meatballs in starch wrappers). An acquired texture, brilliant when good.
- Oyster omelette (o-a-jian). Sweet potato starch, oysters, eggs, a sweet chilli sauce on top.
- Mango shaved ice in season. Cycling-day dessert sorted.
A warning on stinky tofu. It is some people’s favourite dish on the island and most foreigners’ least favourite. You do not need a guidebook to find it. You will smell it from 20 metres away. The south end of Shifen Old Street has some of the most pungent on the island. Approach with caution.
For vegan and vegetarian riders, the easiest move is to look for a vegan restaurant near a major temple. Buddhist vegan cooking has been part of Taiwanese cuisine for centuries, and the cooks at these restaurants are some of the best on the island. Many of the meat substitutes you see at modern vegan restaurants in the West were invented in Chinese Buddhist kitchens generations ago. Outside of those, most family restaurants will adjust dishes if you ask, although the language gap means having a guide along to translate is genuinely useful.
Drinks Worth Riding For
A short word on drinks.
Tea. Taiwan grows some of the best oolong in the world, and the tea hills above Taipei at Maokong are a 20km loop ride from the city centre. The teahouses up there serve tea-infused dishes (tea eggs, sweet potato leaves with goji and tea oil) and on a clear day the view back down to Taipei 101 is the best in the city.
Coffee. A surprise on a Taiwan trip. Specialty coffee culture has exploded in the last ten years and most cycling-friendly towns now have at least one roaster doing flat whites at London quality for half the London price.
Taiwan Beer. Cheap, lager-light, sold in 600ml bottles, and somehow always exactly what you want at the end of a long day. The original is the green-bottled Taiwan Beer Classic. The fruit-beer range (mango, pineapple, grape) divides cyclists evenly.
Kavalan whisky. This is the unexpected one. The Kavalan distillery in the Yilan Valley has won several international single-malt awards over the past decade and is genuinely world-class. On most of our 16-Day Full Island Tour and 7-Day King of the Mountains tour we ride this stretch as a 70km descent towards Yilan, finishing with a whisky tasting. It is one of the most popular afternoons of the trip. We do not recommend doing the climb in the other direction first.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Taiwan cycling food best known for? Convenience and variety. 7-Eleven and FamilyMart sit on almost every junction with hot rice balls, onigiri and sports drinks. Roadside stalls sell tea eggs, dumplings, fruit and zongzi rice dumplings. Family restaurants serve real cooking on tour for less than a takeaway sandwich back home.
Where is the best food on a Taiwan cycling tour? If you only had three stops, we would send you to the petrol station 5km below Dayuling on the Taiwan KOM for the famous zongzi, the soy duck egg stall before the 106 junction in Shiding, and a dinner of swordfish sashimi in Chenggong on the Pacific east coast. None of them are tourist-trap spots and all three are the kind of food a local would tell you about.
Is Taiwanese street food safe to eat? Yes. Hygiene standards on the island are strict by Asian standards and food poisoning from street food is genuinely uncommon. Tap water is safe to drink in the major cities. The one dish you may want to think twice about is stinky tofu, but you will smell it from 20 metres away long before you have to commit.
Are vegan and vegetarian options available while cycling Taiwan? Yes, more than first impressions suggest. Buddhist vegan cooking has been part of Taiwanese cuisine for centuries, and you will find vegan-only restaurants near most major temples. Most family restaurants will also adjust orders if you ask, although the language gap means it helps to have a guide along to translate.
How much does food cost on a cycling tour in Taiwan? Cheap by European or American standards. A bowl of noodle soup at a family restaurant runs to about 100 to 150 NTD. A 7-Eleven lunch is under 200 NTD. A full sit-down group dinner with multiple shared dishes works out at around 500 to 700 NTD per head. On our supported tours, lunches and ride food are included; dinners are paid as you go so you can pick the night’s restaurant on the day.
Want to ride Taiwan with someone who knows which petrol station sells the best zongzi after a 70km climb and which restaurant in Ruisui to book for dinner? Enquire about our 16-Day Full Island Tour, our 5-Day East Coast Rift Valley tour, or any of our other Taiwan cycling tours and we will plan a route around the food worth eating. New to the island? Start with our complete guide to cycling in Taiwan.