Taiwan's Most Iconic Breakfast Spot Serves 1000 People an Hour

Oh, yeah!

Zoa an. Welcome to Taipei.

It is now 7:30 in the morning

and we are here at Fuhang Soy Milk.

This is one of my favorite places for breakfast,

probably in the world.

Fuhang serves simple,

but very traditional, Taiwanese breakfast.

Taiwanese breakfast is sort of like the collection

of the greatest hits in breakfast across China.

So this is Wednesday, 7:30.

This is as short as the line gets.

This breakfast spot is situated inside of an old market.

It's a big building,

and they're on the second floor.

[Eric] On a busy weekend day,

they can do over 5,000 people in five hours.

Inside of this kitchen,

each of the stations is responsible for only one thing.

The first thing we should take a look at

is the ho shaobing.

It's basically like a scallion bread type of thing.

It's sort of a pastry, sort of a little bit like a biscuit.

In my opinion,

this is probably the most impressive thing

that they do here.

It's a well-known breakfast item all throughout Taiwan,

but here it's done with such care

and such volume and with such freshness

that it's always gonna be good.

The mixer is going to be bringing the dough together

and after it ferments, usually overnight,

it goes into this middle center island here.

Chef will roll out these large batches of dough

into long rectangles, stuff them with scallions,

fold the dough over itself.

As you can see, the press on the dough is very, very gentle.

The glaze that's going over the top

is a little bit of a sugar glaze in the form of maltose.

That maltose is going to give it a beautiful,

shiny brown sheen,

but it's also going to allow those sesame seed to stick.

The coolest part is that all of these shaobing

be are fired inside of a tandoor-style vertical oven.

The shaobing be goes directly onto the side of the wall

that is lined with clay.

This oven is made by Fuhang themselves.

It's a vertical oven that's charcoal-roasted.

It bakes for about a minute or two.

It's a really interesting process.

She cools her hand ever so slightly

with a sprinkle of ice cold water.

She slaps the dough into the side of the oven

where the dough is going to stick

onto that porous clay surface.

It bakes for about a minute or two.

It's a really interesting process.

You can hear the crackle.

That crackle is the sesame seeds popping,

and that's part of the indication that it's ready.

She has these cool little scissor tongs

and she just tosses them one by one

when they're perfectly done,

out directly into the basket.

It's kind of amazing.

It's a little bit acrobatic.

And you can see how leavened the dough is.

It's, like, nice and fluffy.

Ugh, there are regulations stopping me from jumping over

and just grabbing one out of the basket,

but it's as fresh and as delicious as it can get.

After the shaobing comes out of the hot oven,

it goes straight into the basket and it goes out this way,

where the customers will buy their shaobing.

And on this side we have the more conventional ovens,

but to me the most exciting station is the youtiao station.

So youtiao is known in the West as Chinese donut.

It's a leavened dough.

You roll it out.

She'll use a cleaver to portion out each dough stick.

She's cutting it kind of like a knife-cut noodle

or like a fettuccine pasta.

After that, she's gonna stretch out the dough

and then press it down with a long metal pin.

And the signature look of a youtiao

is having two of the doughs stuck together

and deep fried together,

so it's kind of serendipitous and it's kind of romantic.

By pushing down the two doughs together,

chef's creating a butterfly shape

that allows for the gluten to expand outwards

a little bit more efficiently in the hot oil.

When the raw youtiao hits the hot oil,

the oil is heating up the water

inside of the youtiao into steam,

and the steam pushes out the exterior

and creating a larger surface area

for the youtiao to expand into, creating a hollow center.

That's the sort of signature texture for a youtiao,

doughy but still airy.

It's kind of like a paradox in terms of texture,

but it's fantastic.

[Lucas] Watching dough expand in hot oil

is just so mesmerizing.

Oh, that technique is so awesome.

And you see this whole area of youtiao, that's fresh made.

Nothing worse than a stale youtiao.

Think about a donut.

Nothing worse than a stale donut.

So the busyness of Fuhang really ensures

that every single youtiao you're getting

is as fresh as it can be,

and that's why it's so, so, so good.

We're back in line downstairs, like everybody else,

because just because you're filming

doesn't mean that you get special treatment.

But the good news is as you're standing in line,

you get to think what you'd like to order.

'Cause there's a lot of customization options, right?

There's a lot of different ways to order things.

So first of all, we have to get the ho shaobing.

Well, what's gonna be inside of it?

[Eric] Because it's already so thick,

I like it with just eggs.

And then ho shaobing, we can do eggs and youtiao.

We get the savory soy milk?

Because the savory soy milk is the number one seller here.

By far!

It's standard issue for a lot

of Chinese soy-milk based breakfasts.

But basically you're pouring hot soy milk

with a little bit of acid together.

As that pouring happens, it's going to coagulate

and it kind of becomes, in my opinion,

it kind of becomes like a tofu soup kind of experience.

Okay, we're almost at the front of the line.

We were around the corner about 20 minutes, we got up here,

so it might look very long,

but it's actually quite efficient.

[speaking Chinese language]

So for ordering, this section is only for beverages,

and as we move down the queue,

we're getting a different station with each section.

[Lucas] Oh, the eggs. Oh, the eggs!

[Eric] Dude, it's all perfect.

[Lucas] Basically kind of one by one,

so perfectly separated.

[speaking foreign language]

Super fast calculation!

Not everybody can work here.

[speaking foreign language]

So this is what we ordered.

So the ho shaobing is for sure

my single favorite thing at Fuhang.

You don't really get this type of shaobing in Taiwan.

Most of the time it's the bao shaobing.

It's laminated pastry, it's very good, it travels well,

but for me, the uniqueness of the clay oven

and the laomian,

it's just the perfect, perfect, perfect item.

[Lucas] Dude, let's get into it.

Come on!

Right here.

So the crumb is quite dense, but it's fluffy.

It's also a little bit of a biscuit on the top

and the bottom is very, like,

it is a little bit more bready.

I mean, it's got that characteristic brown

that you'd see in naan bread

or any sort of flat bread that's cooked

with its bottom stuck onto the side of an oven.

And the texture of shaobing

being really kind of closer resembles bagels, almost.

Oh yeah, yeah, it's got a dense-

Very densely packed, yeasted,

but it's still fluffy enough,

crispy on the outside, nice and toasty.

Can we bite into it now?

I think it's like...

Hue on the top reminds me of a bagel,

you're totally right.

It feels very nutrient-packed.

And so much better when it's hot

and it's so much better when it came

from couple a feet away.

Yeah, it's kind of the fusion of a bagel,

a sourdough, and a scallion pancake, right?

It tastes like a scallion pancake.

But my favorite thing to do here actually

is to dip it into the savory soy milk,

so you rehydrate the shaobing

and you get a little extra flavor.

[Lucas] Let's look at the youtiao real quick.

Oh yeah!

You see that characteristic open crumb?

Hollow center.

Hollow center.

The two doughs that are pressed together

have been opened up.

When you get those two together,

you get a very crisp piece outside,

gluten development in the center,

holding the sides together.

You can see where the steam was escaping, right?

It's evaporating.

The water in the center of the dough,

that wet dough is gonna push outwards.

As it expands,

the starch eventually is going to gelatinize and harden

to create the actual shape that it ends up being.

What's good about this air

is that the outside is so much crispier

and when you dunk it into something, it'll hold

and it'll have plenty of space to soak up that liquid.

So crispy!

And Taiwanese breakfast,

you'll notice there's very much carb on carb on carb.

Taiwan was a very agrarian culture back in the day

and breakfast was the most important meal of the day,

because you would eat the breakfast,

you would go into the fields,

you would work hours and hours and hours

of physical hard labor, so you needed the calories.

You need to put the fried dough inside of the baked dough.

They're busy because they're good,

but they're also good because they're busy.

It's a self-sustaining cycle.

It's a beautiful, positive, self-reinforcing cycle.

You're gonna be intimidated when you see the line.

When you come, you get to see

that the freshness is integral

to the deliciousness of this breakfast,

especially for that ho shaobing.

It really needs to be consumed fresh

for you to understand all the work that's gone into it.

I think this is a great breakfast,

but the breakfast is only the first meal of the day

and there's plenty that we'll have to see around the city.

I'm ready to go.

Time to get outta here.

Onto the next. See ya!

[singing in Chinese]

This is every weekend with Eric Sze.