Taichung Nantun - Big Iron Pot from the Northeast, Little Wife's Iron Pot Stew Taichung Flagship Store

Address: No. 2, Section 4, Huazhong Road, Nantun District, Taichung City, Taiwan 408 Atmosphere/Facilities: Spacious venue and aisles, small table surfaces, self-service condiments, unlimited supply of white rice, shared dressing room with the market. Specialties: Chicken stewed with mushrooms, sauerkraut braised goose Average Price: 800 TWD Rating: Located on Huazhong Road inside the Taichung Fish Market, with parking available at the outdoor and Tidewater City basement fish market parking lots. Parking is free and spaces are ample. Upon entering, the first impression is of a spacious and comfortable environment, fitting the grand and beautiful dining experience one expects in Taichung, especially with the high ceilings due to the partial use of the fish market space! The restaurant has a minimum charge of 600 TWD per person, and although the side door has a sign prohibiting outside food, after asking the staff, it is still possible to bring in meals from nearby restaurants as long as the minimum charge is met. We ordered the Northeastern signature dish, chicken stewed with mushrooms (860 TWD), and the restaurant provided a basic side dish platter. The chicken portion is not large. The mushrooms are the Northeastern specialty hazel mushrooms, the dried kind, so it's recommended to cook for 15-20 minutes. The longer it cooks, the tastier it gets. If not cooked enough, the texture can be a bit hard. The dried potatoes (120 TWD) are the same. The overall flavor is dominated by soybean paste and soy sauce, tending towards the salty side, somewhat similar to the not-sweet Andong stewed chicken. It's recommended to order more starch-based dishes like potato chips and glass noodles to balance the saltiness of the Northeastern soybean paste, which is slightly sweet. There's no time limit for dining in the restaurant, and the staff are usually in a hurry to process orders. It's recommended to let the stew cook for an additional 10-20 minutes after the staff have finished preparing it before eating slowly to allow the flavors to meld. Besides the iron pot stew, having a bowl of rice is also a good choice. For side dishes, we ordered scallion tofu for 60 TWD and pork skin aspic for 120 TWD. Everyone at the scene was confused and felt it was a letdown. A recommended way to eat these is to add some spicy sauce from the self-service condiment area (which I personally quite like). Mix it well and pair it with rice, similar to a tofu rice dish. The pork skin aspic was also not understood by the whole table. You can add some spicy sauce to the dipping plate as well. However, the texture was too loose and not very chewy. We ordered side dishes like Chinese cabbage, chestnuts, duck meatballs, braised large intestines, and a mixed vegetable platter. Four adults, without pairing with rice, were not full and added a 650 TWD portion of ribs to be enough. For drinks, there was no Wong Lo Kat but only Jia Duo Bao. A bottle for 60 TWD is reasonably priced. The specialty drink, water chestnut and sugarcane juice, has a very unique flavor. After finishing the drink, we added corn, sugarcane, and carrots to stew together, which tasted very good.