I had sky ladder for lunch

I have asked some locals before and there isn't a name for this group of food. It consist of many small dishes to accompany a plate of dumplings or a bowl of noodle. It's quite difficult to explain, so it's easier to introduce you to this stall. It's simply called Dumpling Aunty's store in Chinese.
Every stall does their own different small dishes and on Dumplings Auntys menu, you can see they have a wide range of different items.

I think this is a family run stall. I couldn't get a photo of Dumpling aunty, she was cooking the noodles behind the stall and you can see her head below the red sign on the right. Dumpling uncle is responsible for the rest of the dishes, I'll show you that in a minute, and the young girl, I'll assume is aunty's daughter takes the orders and serves the food. That's the two of them standing on the right in the above photo. It's just a busy family run business and everyone chips in to do everything. I saw uncle serving the food, and he was doing the dishes as I left.

Let me show you what this local food is all about. Here's two big saucepans of food. The one on the left is braised tofu, and on the right is a bowl of stock. I'd say that is the essence of the stall.

Here's uncle's work counter, his chopping board and knive. The food inside the cabinet are different parts of pork which are simply blanched that's why the saucepan of stock taste so good as its made from all the food served in the stall. There's all sorts of different parts of the pork, not the normal meaty parts as those are the more expensive cuts. These stalls use the other offcuts that are less expensive such as liver and other offal parts which I won't name here as many westerners don't eat them. I don't want to put you off.

Let me show you what I ordered instead. Here's two bowl of noodles. One with pieces of pork and the the other with liver. The soup base is from the stock we saw earlier and it was very good. I ended up drinking all mine. You'll notice these bowls aren't very large as people normally order quite a few of the other local dishes to go with it.

Here's what I ordered. The braised tofu. I saw lots of other people order this, of course I follow suit, and I understood why when I tasted it. The tofu was very soft and silky smooth inside.

These two are the offcuts. I won't tell you exactly which part it is, let's just say they're both part of the respiratory system. If you really want to know which part it is, drop me a comment below and I'll let you know. The second dish, has a rather nice name called sky ladder. Not sure if that gives you any hints on which part it is.

As I mentioned, these local dishes are quite difficult to explain, it's basically offcuts, braised egg and tofu, blanceed vegetable etc, all garnished with ginger sticks and their unique sauce. Every stall you go will offer different dishes on their menu. You just need to be adventerous.

Restaurant Information

Dumpling Aunty's store

No. 63, Minle St, Datong District, Taipei City, Taiwan 103