{"id":8487,"date":"2017-09-28T07:01:32","date_gmt":"2017-09-27T23:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eatingintaipei.com\/?p=8487"},"modified":"2023-08-22T15:15:13","modified_gmt":"2023-08-22T07:15:13","slug":"eating-like-a-local-in-tainan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eatingintaipei.com\/eating-like-a-local-in-tainan\/","title":{"rendered":"Tainan City – Eating like a local in Tainan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Honest in its presentation, Tainan is a relatively small city to the south of Taiwan, unique in regard to the other cities around the island.<\/h2>\n

Last year I was fortunate enough to be invited down to Tainan by the Tainan City Government to help promote Tainan City’s restaurants. This year, I was asked once more. For the uninitiated, Tainan is essentially known as Taiwan’s Mecca for food. Say Tainan to any Taiwanese person and they will say one of two things about the place: Food, or temples. Both of which are in plentiful supply in this glorious city.<\/p>\n

Check out the FB page for the event, here<\/a><\/h4>\n

Unlike Taipei, which is becoming more and more English friendly, Tainan can still be quite difficult for foreigners to both navigate and also access. The government has set up an initiative aimed at improving the English on menus in restaurants throughout Tainan city, and each year chooses a ‘Top 100’ of eateries in Tainan, too. The residents of Tainan take their food seriously, with lots of shops\/restaurants into the 3rd\/4th generations of owners.<\/p>\n

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\u597d\u8c46\u7238\u5496\u5561\u53ef\u53ef\u70d8\u7119\u8216 Apapa Cafe & Cocoa<\/h2>\n

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I am both an avid coffee drinker, and an avid coffee maker. I enjoy the process of coffee making, from grinding, to weighing, to pouring, to savouring. However, what Apapa does best, and almost revolutionary so, is the roasting<\/strong>. Did you know that a lot of coffee roasting machines use gas? According to the owner of this place, using gas in the roasting process is bad for the consumers health. Who knew?!<\/p>\n

So, the owner of this shop decided to go ahead and build, from scratch, an electric coffee roaster. Slowly roasting the coffee using electric only, ingestion of fumes are limited, and the roasting of the beans can be more delicately controlled. The result? Light-medium roasted coffee with bags of flavour, and health benefits (rather than risks).<\/p>\n

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Apapa’s inside is clean and nice. Lots of coffee smells – yessss<\/p>\n

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How cute are these cups?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As we sat down with the owner of the place, Mr. Chen, we were presented with this lovely cup of coffee to kick start our stay in Tainan. Mr. Chen created this place in memory of his grandad, a humble sugar factory worker.<\/p>\n

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As we supped on a nice latte, Mr. Chen shocked us – all of the equipment is made in Taiwan, by him and his company. Why? They got rid of the gas roasting method due to the health implications of the roasting itself, and replaced it with their own patented electric coffee roasting machine.<\/p>\n

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I didn’t know these are grown in Taiwan!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What’s more, is that they also use Taiwan cocoa beans grown in PingTung, to produce an insanely good cocoa drink – it’s good enough to render any chocolate fanatic into a choco-coma.<\/p>\n

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Cocoa pod, beans, and grounds. From start to finish.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Whilst there isn’t so much of an emphasis on the sourcing of the beans at Apapa coffee, they still have a wide variety from popular growing areas all over the world.<\/p>\n

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They’ve got a couple of these nice gift boxes, too.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Have you ever used a syphon?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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From Panama, this coffee has an orange, grape, dark chocolate flavour – the dark chocolate absolutely punches through in this coffee (we even bought a bag to take home with us).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Indonesian beans, with caramel, cream and chocolate flavours.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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From Africa, expect nutty flavours with a sweet chocolate note, too.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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From Central America, expect brown sugar, orange and vanilla flavours to burst out of this bag.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Coffee bean processes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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I’ve never seen this process of the bean before. And I didn’t even know that you have to remove the outer shell of the bean!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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We took a bag of the Panama and also a bag of the Costa Rican. Looking forward to getting my brew on at home.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another great cup of coffee<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here we tasted the Costa Rican coffee, which was my favourite. Less water was used to brew the coffee than the previous cup, and a difference in the water of only 2\u00b0C (81\u00b0C in the previous cup and 83\u00b0C in this cup) made the depth of the coffee greater and the bitterness greater, too.<\/p>\n

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But we couldn’t leave without a cup of chocolate – yum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Oh. My. Days.<\/h2>\n

This iced cocoa from Apapa was so damn good. Every time we come back to Tainan, we eat at MaoDon sushi\u00a0\u6bdb\u4e3c.<\/a> However, this time it wasn’t possible as we had other priorities. So, this incredible Cocoa drink was the best way to kick off our weekend in Tainan, and will be added to the list for next time we are down here.<\/p>\n

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