Taiwan is really the king of night markets. I have not traveled to a place that does it better. I'd been to several of the famous ones, such as Shilin Night Market (士林夜市) and Ningxia Night Market (寧夏夜市). I knew that one obvious one that was missing from that group was Raohe Night Market 饒河夜市, which I saw mentioned frequently online.
I dragged Bryan there one night while we were in Taiwan because I had really strong memories of an amazing black pepper bun 胡椒餅 that I had with my Dad the last time we were in Taiwan together (in 2017!). I had read that the original location of this black pepper bun place （饒河街福州世祖胡椒餅） was in Raohe, so I really wanted to check it out!
How to Get There
The market is located right next to Sonshan Ciyou Temple 松山慈祐宮. You can take the MRT to Sonshan MRT station. Alternatively, you could take an Uber straight there (which is what we did).
Black Pepper Bun Place #1
Moments after getting out of the car, we stumbled upon this very traditional looking sign that said 胡椒餅 Black Pepper Buns!
I was like, this MUST be it! I ran up and got in line. It was raining, so the line wasn't crazy, but there were still plenty of people waiting.
While Bryan waited in line I ran to the front to snap some photos of the lady making these buns from scratch.
The buns are baked in this traditional cylindrical kilns where they are stuck along the sides and baked at 200 - 300 degrees Celsius.
Don't these sesame scallion pastries just look so yummy??
When lines are long, the food is fresh, and it was great to eat such a freshly made black pepper buns.
An THAT was our first bite at the market. It was pretty tasty!
Black Pepper Bun #2
It wasn't until we got inside the real market (inside the gate), that we realized the actual famous black pepper bun shop, the one called 福州世祖, was here. This one has a Michelin Bib Gourmand. This is the one I had with my dad back in 2017!
This operation is MUCH bigger, and they have a pretty well organized line that's designed for waiting (I guess the Michelin rating really draws people!). There are multiple kilns and probably 5-6 workers working at once. It's like an well trained assembly line, with various people working on different steps of the black pepper bun making process.
After try both, to be honest, both black pepper buns were pretty delicious. You can watch this video of my Taiwan trip to see me trying both.
Raohe Market is HUGE, with many many stalls. It's a long market with essentially two main sides. We walked the entire length in one direction, and then turned around and walked back on the opposite side. It's perfect way to at least get a look at all the stalls.
Pineapple Ice Cream + cilantro + peanut Lumpia
One of my FAVORITE uniquely Taiwanese night market snacks is this unusual dessert lumpia (you know I love my lumpias) filled with pineapple ice cream, cilantro, and powdered peanut brittle. It is surprisingly not too sweet perhaps the cilantro adds balance?), and it's really really quite good!
Tapioca Pearls before there was Boba . . .
Long before boba became a thing, you could eat sweet tapioca balls in a sweet syrup as a dessert in Taiwan. My mom used to make it at home when I was young. It was nostalgic for me to see this lady selling bowlfuls of this traditional type of tapioca pearls.
A lot of places were selling these sweet potato fried balls that looked interesting. Sometimes they were yellow, sometimes purple. It seemed popular, though I didn't try it.
Steamed abalone, conche shells, and more!
World's Largest Scallion Pancake?
I just thought this was funny, so I took a photo.
Overall Thoughts - Raohe Night Market
There's A LOT of see, and my photos above only give you a tiny snippet of what it's like to walk through Raohe. It's really quite fun, and I definitely recommend checking it out. It's much bigger than Ningxia Night Market, but not as big as Shilin Night Market. The food is overall pretty good, though I was disappointed by the "chicken soft bones", which seemed to just be ordinary (kinda dry) fried chicken. The black pepper buns were tasty, and we also tried another Michelin Bib Gourmand freshly made mochi stall that was pretty tasty (sorry, it was really, really hard to get a good photo, so I didn't manage to capture one).
Raohe Night Market
Raohe St, Songshan District, Taipei City, Taiwan 105
