Tainan Brunch Tour and Chimei Art Museum Day Trip

Spend a day in Tainan with me with a Tainan Brunch Tour, exploring the Chimei Museum, and ending with the BEST room temperature beef hot pot ever! It rained so much on our Tainan trip, we had to look for some indoor activities! The rain didn’t stop our appetite! We tried some of Tainan’s most iconic local brunch foods like rice dumplings and lamb soup, and ended our day with an epic beef hotpot!

Getting To Tainan

Tainan is on the southern end of Taiwan, and is definitely a food paradise. I love coming to Tainan every time I visit because there’s just so much to explore. There are a few different ways to get to Tainan from Taipei:

• Driving: My parents drove about 4 hours down Highway 1 to meet us in Tainan
• There are bus routes that will take you as well, so you don’t need to rent a car to make this trip.
• By local train, it takes about 3.5 hours.
• Taiwan High Speed Rail, the FASTEST way, which is about 1.5 hours, Be sure to check out my High Speed Rail post on my trip from Taoyuan to Tainan.

Rainy Brunch Tour In Tainan

In the few days that we were staying in Tainan, it was pouring rain. So, what better to do on a downpour morning than to stay indoors and try a bunch of different brunch foods? Tainan’s a breakfast food paradise for sure, so I show you everything we tried on this mini brunch tour. Everything I’ve eaten is so uniquely Tainan, I haven’t tried it in any other city that way!

Lotus Wrapped Sticky Rice Dumpling – 黃家菜粽

My mom was craving lotus wrapped sticky rice dumplings, a classic Tainan breakfast, so we headed to 黃家菜粽. Here, you can get sticky rice dumplings, cold noodles, and miso soup for no more than 45 NTD ($1.50) per item.

The sticky rice dumpling is wrapped in lotus leaf and stuffed with a bunch of savory fillings. I wish I could have this every single day for breakfast. The fillings are fragrant from mushrooms and rich from pork belly and salted eggs. They’re quite filling, so if you have a small appetite, it’s best to share.

In Tainan, the classic way of eating sticky rice dumplings is surprisingly with miso soup. Their Taiwanese style miso soup has the classic tofu, seaweed, and anchovies, but also chunks of freshly fried Chinese doughnuts to add some substance. It’s super simple, and in fact I’m pretty sure you can recreate it at home with my miso soup recipe. It’s savory but light, and washes down the sticky rice bites perfectly.

Here at 黃家菜粽, you can grab and cheap and filling breakfast that the locals love for $3 a meal. It’s a delicious way to live like a local.

Room Temperature Lamb Soup – 包成羊肉

It was still pouring outside, so we decided to go across the street for some fresh mutton soup at 包成羊肉. This place definitely caught me by surprise, because although unassuming, they’re actually super popular in Tainan. They serve lamb the same way Tainan usually loves to serve their beef in the Tainan room temperature style, where the meat is butchered daily and never refrigerated.

The menu is simple: choose simply lamb meat or add any lamb parts you’d like in either original soup, herbal soup, or dry with sauce. We got an original and and herbal soup to share.

The original soup is just pure mutton. I don’t know how they do it, but there’s no gamey taste in the meat or soup. Instead, it’s just the most comforting and pure meat-infused broth paired with tasty tender mutton. Made with the angelica root, the herbal soup is much darker in color, and has a deeply medicinal savory flavor.

They have 4 self-served condiments you can use to dip your mutton in: bean sauce, sweet and spicy, white vinegar, and thin sliced ginger. It’s so fun trying different combinations of the 4!

All items are 120 NTD for small and 180 NTD for large orders. They open every day of the week except Monday at 5 am, and close when they sell out, often by 11 am. We were lucky to come on a less busy day since it was so rainy. If you’re looking to try some super fresh lamb soup, get here early!

Creative Boba Tea – 甜又鮮飲料

By the time we finish the soup it stopped raining so I guess it was meant to be. We wanted to grab some drinks along the way, so we ordered some boba at 甜又鮮飲料. They’ve got self ordering kiosks and brightly colored drink posts all over the store.

It’s so hard to choose what to drink! They have many creative fruit tea drinks and sodas to choose from, so you’ll find something you like for sure. The drinks here are so good, and the store is super clean. My sister and I each grabbed a tasty fruit tea, and it was so refreshing. Stop by for a quick drink!

Steamed Sticky Rice Scholar Cakes – 泉記米行

We came across the tiniest, most unassuming rice shop, 泉記米行, selling traditional Scholar Cakes. Made with freshly milled sticky rice flour directly in the store, these traditional rice cakes have to be good. Named because they look like the scholar hats of ancient China, these steamed rice cakes are also called “Scholar Cakes” 狀元糕. 

Made by filling molds with sticky rice flour and sesame or peanut sugar, these cakes are steamed and come in packs of 6 for $96 TND or 10 for $160 TND. Because of it’s association with scholars, many students come to eat this traditional dessert before exams for good luck.

These scholar cakes were so good, we actually ended up going back for seconds on our trip to Anping Old Street! Fresh off the grill, they’re steaming and soft, filled with sesame or peanut powder. If you let it cool a little, the texture changes completely into a chewier, bouncier, mochi-like bite. I daresay it gets better after it cools a bit! Don’t miss out on these scholar cakes, because it’s harder and harder to find in Taiwan now.

Chimei Museum: World’s Biggest Violin Collection

Since the rain really started picking up, we decided to choose an indoor activity. With both Chimei Museum and the Tainan Art Museum, Tainan’s no stranger to appreciating the arts. Today, we visited the beautiful Chimei Museum, a private museum built by Wen-Long Shi, the former chairman of the Chimei group. It’s my dad’s first time here, so it’s super exciting for us.

I love the story and history behind Chimei Museum! Because of his love for museums as a kid, Wen-Long Shi believed you should always have access to the wonders of music and art regardless of financial status. Despite his humble beginnings, he worked hard with aspirations to one day open a museum for the public. Today, Chimei Museum houses various types of his private collections, including one of the world’s largest violin collections.

There’s so much to look at, we spent the rest of our day just observing beautiful paintings, weapons, scultures, and taxidermy. Tickets to the museum are about $150 NTD (about $10), and you can definitely spend a whole day here. We decided to drive to the museum today. You can also get to Chimei Museum by bus from the main train stations, or take a taxi from Tainan City Center.

A-Yu Beef Shabu Shabu 阿裕牛肉涮涮鍋

I am about to put you on something that changed Dom’s life forever the first time he tried it: Tainan’s room temperature beef hot pot (台南溫體牛火鍋) at A-Yu Beef Shabu Shabu 阿裕牛肉涮涮鍋. Every day the meat is rushed directly from the farm to be butchered at the restaurant without any refrigeration to ensure the meat is served within 6 hours. It’s the most melt-in your mouth beef that you will ever try in your life.

I would never forget Dom’s face when he took the first bite of the beef. Just looking at the meat, it may not seem special, but it’s hiding some good flavor. The thinly sliced beef is tender, but not too fatty and has a slight chew that you can’t find with any other types of beef. All the thinly sliced beef needs is a few seconds in the hot bone broth and you are ready to enjoy. Each cut of beef has it’s own unique flavor, and it’s a super addicting bite.

This delicious beef hot pot meal starts with a 100 NTD pot price, and you can order different cuts of beef for 200-300 per plate. Vegetables and drinks can be purchased from the fridge on the first floor before you head upstairs to the dining area, so I suggest you do that first. You also get complimentary braised pork rice with your meal, so don’t forget to get a bowl while you’re here. Like many other restaurants in Tainan, they do sell out fast so I recommend coming at least 10 minutes before they open to ensure you get a seat.

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