Night market
In the kitchen
How it’s prepared
Everything about danzai is in the proportions. Thin alkaline oil noodles are dunked in a small strainer in boiling water, tipped into the bowl over a few bean sprouts, then dressed with mashed garlic, a little black vinegar and a spoonful of minced pork sauce. Broth made from shrimp heads and shells goes in, and a single shrimp and cilantro finish it.
The pork sauce is the soul of the bowl. A 2008 Business Today feature on danzai says stalls of this kind always have a big pot of aged braising liquid, and that the key to a good bowl is the minced pork. The portion is tiny, just a few mouthfuls, so some diners order a second bowl or add a braised egg and a side dish or two. Do not confuse it with 切仔麵 (tshik-á-mī), the northern noodle soup with a pork-bone broth and a bigger serving; it is a different dish.
Origins
History and origins
Danzai noodles are generally traced to Tainan. The most repeated account says that Hong Yutou (洪芋頭), a fisherman of Zhangzhou, Fujian descent, began selling noodles around 1895 to get through the off-season, first from shoulder poles on the street and later from a small stall near Tainan's Shuixian Temple, with lanterns reading 度小月, 'getting through the slack months'. Those months are said to be the typhoon season between Qingming and the Mid-Autumn Festival, when fishermen could not safely put to sea, and 擔仔 refers to the carrying pole, which is also how the Ministry of Education's dictionary explains the name. The story rests largely on the businesses' own telling and press retellings, with little independent documentation for the date or details, so read it as 'is said to'.
After Hong Yutou's death the family business divided into two lines trading as Du Hsiao Yueh (度小月) and 洪芋頭, though reports disagree on the details: the Liberty Times says the split came in 1972, in the third generation, while Public Television's report speaks of the founder's sons. The Ximen Road 洪芋頭 shop was reported permanently closed in late 2016, and no later reopening turned up in the sources checked. The shrimp-shell broth has relatives elsewhere: one food writer notes that Xiamen's shrimp noodles and Penang's Hokkien mee also start from shrimp-shell stock and share roots in Hokkien migrant food culture, though only Taiwan's danzai is crowned with a minced pork sauce.
