Vegetarian and Vegan Options
Taiwan’s strong Buddhist tradition has created a sophisticated vegetarian food culture, and night markets reflect this. However, navigating vegetarian and vegan options requires understanding the landscape and asking the right questions.
Adaptable Dishes
Many standard night market foods are vegetarian or can be made vegetarian with modifications. Understanding which items naturally fit dietary requirements versus which need adaptation helps you order effectively.
Naturally vegetarian options include certain fried items (vegetable tempura, sweet potato balls, fried taro), fresh fruit, corn (grilled or boiled), some noodle soups if made with vegetable broth, and various sweet treats (shaved ice with fruit, certain traditional pastries).
Items that might be vegetarian but require verification include spring rolls (some contain meat, others don’t), filled buns and dumplings (check the filling), stinky tofu (usually vegetarian but sometimes fried with other non-vegetarian ingredients), and grilled items (vegetables are fine, but check what sauce is used as some contain animal products).
Hidden Animal Products
Several ingredients commonly used in Taiwanese cooking aren’t obviously animal-derived but pose problems for strict vegetarians and vegans.
Oyster sauce appears in many stir-fried dishes. Despite its name, some oyster sauces are actually vegetarian mushroom-based versions, but confirming this requires asking. Shrimp paste or dried shrimp enhance flavour in numerous dishes and sauces. Lard is sometimes used for cooking or flavouring. Chicken or pork broth forms the base of many soups and noodle dishes.
Practical Strategies
Several approaches increase your success in finding satisfying vegetarian and vegan food at night markets.
Visit markets with dedicated vegetarian stalls. Asking locals or researching specific night markets beforehand identifies which ones have strong vegetarian offerings.
Focus on naturally plant-based items rather than attempting to modify dishes. Ordering grilled corn, fresh fruit, vegetable-based fried items, and explicitly vegetarian noodle dishes involves less uncertainty than trying to special-order modifications to dishes designed around meat.
Accept that perfect clarity isn’t always possible. In situations where your language skills are limited and the vendor’s English is minimal, you might not achieve certainty about every ingredient. This requires personal judgment about your comfort level with ambiguity. Some people prefer to err on the side of caution and stick to obviously safe options; others accept that occasional inadvertent consumption of small amounts of animal products is inevitable when travelling.
Finally, recognise that whilst navigating vegetarian options requires more attention than for omnivores, Taiwan is far easier than many Asian countries in this regard. The strong Buddhist vegetarian tradition means that being vegetarian is well-understood, and options exist if you know how to find them.