Tim Ho Wan 添好運

Tim Ho Wan is a Cantonese dim sum place that has US franchises – a couple in NYC, one in Irvine, Vegas, Houston, and Waikiki each, so it wasn’t top of my list to hit while in Taiwan. However, I wanted to open up my parent’s culinary horizons beyond Ikea food, so we ventured out to the Taipei Train Station area.

Ordering is through a contactless menu, which was eye opening for my parents – yes they are more of a luddite than I am. To say that they live under a rock is a slight exaggeration, but somewhat true. I reassured them that people, like my parents, without phones can still ask for menus.

This is the must have at Tim Ho Wan – the char sui bun. Instead of the steamed white bun, theirs is baked with the bun slightly crispy and sweet like a bolo bao.

The usual dim sum fare from upper left clockwise – chicken feet, sui mai, turnip cake, shrimp vermicelli roll, taro cake, crispy fried tofu (this was surprisingly our favorite of the bunch).

Capped off with their sweet buttery cream buns

Mom and dad liked it enough that they plan to return in the future. First step to prying them away from Ikea food appears to be a success (Dad was also recently introduced to Tonkotsu ramen, and is open to the idea of venturing out for that as well).

Since it was a nice day and we felt the need to burn off the calories, we decided to walk to the bookstore to pickup a set of limited edition books for Bei. On our way there we passed the elementary school where I was enrolled in 40 years ago. Thinking back, it was pretty amazing how quickly I managed to learn Chinese after I was plucked out of first grade back in NYC, and plopped into second grade in a regular Taiwanese school. Granted I scored an 11 (out of 100) on my first Chinese language test, but I managed to redeem myself with an 89 on the next. Just goes to show how resilient a child’s brain is.