Taiwanese meatballs (台灣肉圓), also known as Bawan or Taiwanese Lasagna (by yours truly), are highly famed by locals in Tainan – but you won’t see them on any travel blog. That’s because they’re more obscure than popular local Taiwanese foods like stinky tofu and braised pork rice due to appearance and flavor.
Taiwanese meatballs are slippery dumpling skins wrapped haphazardly around cooked minced meat, ladled generously over with a sweet red chili sauce and topped with a white soy paste. They’re delicious, though a bit of an odd culinary experience compared to the usual fried or stewed extravaganza. So what makes them such a popular food in Tainan?
What are Taiwanese Meatballs made of?
Taiwanese meatballs are made by taking a wet flour mixture of tapioca flour or rice flour and quickly enfolding meat into it to make a makeshift, almost passable dumpling. These wet ‘dumplings’ are then steamed in a large pot steamer. Once cooked, they’re ladled into a bowl and topped generously with two sauces: one red, one white. The red one is sweet but not a distinct flavor that one would or could recognize, while the other is decidedly similar to daikon radish paste but in sauce form.
The texture of the dish, meanwhile, is confusing to say the least. This is in part due to the dumpling skin greatly differing from your average dumpling with it being like a rice flour or tapioca version of lasagna noodles – hence my creative name. This distinction to dumplings continues through with the taste, which you should by now have realized isn’t anything like actual meatballs.
What does Bawan taste like?
Bawan is one of those Taiwanese dishes that you’ll enjoy, but you don’t quite know why – much like stewed intestines. This is partly due to the thick gloopy red sauce, which usually toes a fine line between overbearingly sweet and weird. There’s really no other way to describe it.
Luckily, the meat inside the meatballs is describable, although a potential caveat for some. That’s because it’s quite cooked, much more so than any small meat dumpling from Din Tai Fung or Bafang Dumpling (two popular dumpling restaurants in Taiwan). Yet this surprisingly goes quite well with the sauce and lasagna-esque skin, so you shouldn’t knock it until you try it.
Where to Eat Taiwanese Meatballs
Taiwanese meatballs appear quite easy to make, making stores selling them pretty populous in Tainan’s West Central District, the center of Tainan. However, it wasn’t until my fifth or sixth trip down south that I even tried my first bowl of Bawan. I credit this to Taiwanese meatball restaurants being incredibly local. That doesn’t mean meatball stores aren’t not welcoming, it’s just that, to untrained eyes, you really can’t tell what these restaurants sell.
Take, for example, 福記肉圓2店, a restaurant opposite Tainan Art Museum Building 2 and nearby Tainan Confucius Temple. It only sells Taiwanese meatballs, with a bowl of two with the works (sauces) going for just $50 NTD. It’s a factory set up too, with the cooking, steaming, and sauce counters taking up the vast majority of the space.
Even so, and even with its bare minimum number of fans to keep customers from sweltering, it’s a popular spot for a food in Tainan. You just have to know how many balls you want.
- Address: No. 299, Section 1, Fuqian Road, Zhongxi District, Tainan City 700
- Open hours: Everyday, 11am to 8.30pm
Tip💡: Only chopsticks are available so you really need to bring the bowl to your lips to fully enjoy this local Taiwanese food.
Takeaways
Taiwanese Lasagna is better known by its proper name of Taiwanese meatballs and Bawan, yet they’re unlike any meatball you can imagine. Sweet and slippery in the best possible way, Bawan is the secret delicacy of local food in Tainan.
And, while you probably won’t be heading back for seconds, it’s an important dish to try to understand local life in Tainan – and to admire the Tainan Art Museum Building 2 in the shade.
