What's good to eat for lunch? Helping you easily solve the lunch choice dilemma

What to eat for lunch? This is an eternally unanswerable question.

Especially in this unbearably hot summer, just thinking about leaving the air-conditioned room to go out and hunt for food - whether squeezing into a crowd at a casual eatery waiting for the shop to serve your meal, or lining up in a long queue to buy a takeout lunchbox to bring back to the office - is exhausting just to think about. Although I have fantasized about being like Inogashira Goro in "Kodoku no Gurume", spending all day visiting clients on the streets and then seeking out delicious lunches to enjoy the solitary time of eating, when I think about the risk of stepping on a landmine while sweating profusely under the blazing sun as I weigh my options, I figure it would be better to just be like Hamazaki Mitsuo in "Saikou no Rikon", always settling lunch hastily with two rice balls and a bottle of green juice.

Interestingly, in such a hot summer, one Japanese ramen shop after another has been opening up grandly on the streets of this city. Tora Shou Musashi, Ippudo - these ramen shops that boast rich tonkotsu, chicken bone, and fish-based white broth with miso, soy sauce, and salt flavors - although just looking at the photos makes you feel hot enough to sweat, the queues at their doors grow longer one shop after another. After finally getting inside, the saltiness of the signature tonkotsu broth paired with the spiciness of the must-order Akamaru - although you smack your lips and praise the deliciousness while eating, you're also drenched in sweat, not knowing how to face the scorching sun outside.

So I can't help but think, Taipei is so hot, there should be more Vietnamese grilled meat cold rice noodle shops, not miso tonkotsu soy sauce salt ramen!

Just imagine, squeezing a wedge of lemon into the bowl, mixed with fish sauce and chili, a sweet-and-sour taste with a hint of spiciness - as it enters your mouth, the chewy rice noodles and the crisp lettuce make the summer heat disappear entirely, and the freshly grilled meat slices fill you with energy. No matter how fierce the sun outside is... you'll still be afraid, so add a cup of Vietnamese iced soy milk with pandan leaf fragrance, and you'll definitely be able to make it back to the office!

Unlike the East District of this city, in the place where I work, what keeps opening up more and more are not Japanese ramen shops, but Vietnamese snack shops. These snack shops mostly sell only two items - cold rice noodles and beef pho - and the cooks are mostly Vietnamese brides who married far away and came to Taiwan. Just as Taiwanese students recreate Taiwanese flavors like braised pork rice and beef noodles in their school dormitories, these Vietnamese mothers also try to use seasonings from small Vietnamese goods shops in the market to recreate the taste of their hometown in this unfamiliar city. Some small shops that have grown their business will have the owner find employees to take over and stabilize the original shop, while the owner goes off to open new locations. And because the employees who take over are also mostly Vietnamese brides, every time I sit in the shop listening to them chat in Vietnamese, although I don't quite fantasize that I'm in Hanoi, I always feel that there's a very interesting network growing in this city, one that deserves for us to understand more deeply.

Such a network, unlike the Japanese ramen chain stores in the East District with their advantageous cultural symbols and massive capital investment, is more about how these Southeast Asian sisters, on a limited material foundation, painstakingly build an environment they are familiar with. This environment is spatial, it is aromatic, it is flavorful. And in such small shops, although the flavors are unfamiliar, the process of building this environment is something we know all too well. Think about the snacks at the Yuanhuan roundabout behind the station, the shops in Zhonghua Market - isn't it the same? These spaces, although they have disappeared with urban development and the invasion of capital, these "flavors" have always remained vivid in our memories.

Unfortunately, perhaps as Leung Man-tao said:

This is a place where individuals dream of being middle class and collectively dream of the so-called "modern", and the dream is almost fulfilled. For such a country, traditional street vendors who get up at three or four in the morning, start simmering soup over the fire at five, sweating profusely, then open for business at noon, hawking noodles at stalls along the street - are simply a nightmare from the past, something to be eliminated as quickly as possible. That Cai Sheng can no longer taste the flavors of his childhood today shows Singapore's progress and success. If you find this story of the disappearance of street vendors and traditional snacks familiar, that's because after Singapore, it's our turn - we Hong Kong people love to dream that kind of modern middle-class dream the most.

Now it is almost impossible for us to hope that this city can recreate the flavors of the Yuanhuan and Zhonghua Market of those days. At least, we still have these Vietnamese snack shops.