Food
Eating is the itinerary
Taiwan is one of the few places where I tell people to plan the day around meals and let the sights fill the gaps. The island eats in a rhythm: breakfast shops before 7, noodle lunches, an afternoon papaya milk, and night markets that begin at dusk. Learn the rhythm and the whole trip gets better.
The system, briefly
Breakfast is a destination. The traditional shops do soy milk, sweet or savory, with fried crullers, egg crepes, and rice rolls, and the best of them sell out by nine. Set one alarm on your trip for this. One is enough to make you set a second.
Night markets are a skill. Walk the full lane once before buying anything, note the stalls with lines of locals rather than lines of cameras, then commit. Share everything and order in rounds. Nothing worth eating costs more than about NT$80, which frees you to gamble.
No Mandarin required, some courage required. Point at what the last person ordered, hold up fingers, smile. The stall aunties have fed a million confused visitors and will feed you too. If you can manage one phrase, make it zhe ge, meaning this one, delivered while pointing.
Convenience stores are legitimate. Tea eggs simmering by the register, a wall of fresh onigiri, and the smell of braised everything: 7-Eleven and FamilyMart in Taiwan operate on a level that surprises people. No shame at 1am. None at 1pm either.
Where the deep dives live
Food runs through every guide on this site rather than sitting in a listicle silo. The Taipei guide ranks the city's night markets and explains the salty soy milk order. The 10-day route walks you through Tainan, which is the island's food capital and does not pretend otherwise: beef soup at dawn, milkfish congee, oyster omelets, and the ordering method that works when the menu has no English and the line has no patience.
Dedicated deep dives being written from trip notes: the Taipei breakfast shop crawl, a night market strategy guide with named stalls, and bubble tea taxonomy from someone who remembers when it was one shop in Taichung.