Hualien

Breakfast in Hualien City can start with an egg crepe or a scallion pancake. The 'egg scallion pancake' recommended by the county tourism site is rolled and fried to order with egg, crisp outside and soft inside, and shops often call it 'bomb' (炸彈) scallion pancake. The best-known pair of carts is near Fuxing Street: the yellow cart at 102 Fuxing Street and the older-brand blue cart at 110 Lane, No. 2 (Bella.tw, 2023). The yellow cart generally opens around 12:30 or 1 p.m., so it suits an afternoon snack better than breakfast.

The city also has traditional dumpling shops: Zhou Jia Steamed Dumplings and Xiaolongbao on Gongzheng Street, which the gofunit guide (updated October 2026) lists as open 10:00 to 02:00. After the April 2024 earthquake the nearby Fukai Hotel had to be demolished and Zhou Jia suspended business for a time, so look at its Facebook page before you go. Gongzheng Baozi has moved to Renai Street (SETN, April 2024) and is no longer next door.

In Hualien, mochi is more than a snack; it is the souvenir. The Zeng Ji (曾記) website lists ten shops (one of them at the Suao service area in Yilan), including one on the third floor of Hualien Station, the ‘Maji Store | Mochi Story House’ on Guolian 1st Road and a Zhongshan Road shop. Besides peanut, red bean and sesame mochi, the range covers yokan, peeled chilies and Hualien sweet potato cakes.

Hualien sweet potato cake is steamed sweet potato or taro, mashed, brushed with egg and baked. After the North-Link Railway opened, it and mochi became what travelers carried home.

Indigenous cooking in Hualien is not one cuisine. The Amis traditionally ate millet and glutinous rice as staples and are known for their wild-vegetable cooking, with ferns, bamboo shoots and the tender hearts of many plants regularly on the table; coastal communities also hold fishing and sea rituals, so the sea matters to them too. The Truku, Bunun and Atayal in the mountains each have their own crops and rites, and millet, for example, is central to Bunun ritual life.

The easiest way for a visitor to meet this food is the Indigenous Street at Dongdamen Night Market. The county tourism site describes it as focused on mountain vegetable dishes and stone-slab cooking, while Supertaste and Marie Claire's market guides list bamboo-tube rice, charcoal-grilled mochi (Supertaste says 'dulun' is the Amis word for mochi), sausage with Maqaw and a Maqaw fried-noodle bun; Maqaw (馬告) is mountain pepper, a spice used by several Indigenous peoples. A night market is a commercial setting, its stalls differ in who runs them, and you should not assume which community a stall belongs to. To learn about home and festival food, look to the harvest festivals, which the Amis usually hold between late July and September, with most Hualien communities after the start of August; or book a community-led tour or restaurant, and follow each community's rules: do not photograph people or ceremonies without permission.

The East Coast National Scenic Area lists Qixingtan, Yanliao and Shitiping harbor, among other places, as seafood-street locations, and signature dishes include marlin sashimi, marlin balls, mola intestines and red swimming crab with glass noodles. Flying fish run from roughly mid-April to mid-June, with the waters off Shitiping among the fishing grounds, and Xincheng, which lands a large share of the east coast's mola, is known as the hometown of the mola.

Seafood depends on the day's boats and prices move, so ask for the market price before you order.