三元號魯肉飯 — Restaurant in Datong District

I decided to visit this place because of 2 reasons, luroufan is one of the most signature dishes in Taiwan, and this place was recommended by Michelin chef Andre Chiang. I arrived early even before the shop opened and there were already a few other customers waiting outside as well. The moment the shop opened, they rushed in like they have not eaten for very long. Waited outside for my friend and entered together 10 minutes later, which the earlier customers were already halfway eating the food. We sat and looked at the menu for a while before deciding on what to eat and went to order. Unfortunately one of the items we wanted the braised egg and tofu were unavailable so we gave it a miss. Ended up ordering luroufan, sharks fin soup with meat, century egg tofu and the pork ribs soup. There were a few things which we liked and not about this place, all due to personal preferences. The luroufan was decent but was not really to my liking. In general when you get a bowl of this in Taiwan, always I would see they give enough gravy for every grain of rice to be covered, but not here. The other thing I noticed is that the meat is on the leaner side so you don't get a lot of fats and this is also something which I would have preferred a mix of lean and fat would be good. Thirdly the century egg that we had felt kinda strange because the taste of it was pretty mild. Guess I am used to eating century eggs from China the taste is more pronounced as compared to this. The things that we liked were the soup. The sharks fin soup was decent but there's no sharks fin at all in the soup, just liked the gluey texture of the soup, and the pork rib soup was a surprise and highlight because of the fried pork rib. It's like very common here the soup is with fried pork ribs while in other Asian countries it's really the real original pork rib which is boiled together with the soup. I guessed my tastebuds must be very different from the Michelin Chef's one as I thought it was average but would have preferred different cuts of meat. However still do recommend visiting as its a pretty old shop and maybe this will be the type you like if you are more into...

There are many forms of braised pork with rice in Taiwan. Some shops (Jinfeng and Jinxian) slice fatty pork into thin columns, which some people don't like (I'm not one of those). This place does things differently; the braised pork is slowly simmered as its own fat renders out, making it really soft with a really fatty mouthfeel from all the rendered fat that clings to the meat and coats the rice. I really recommend eating at the restaurant as the magical fatty flavor disappears the longer it sits on the rice if you get takeout. You might think a larger bowl is better as well, but the smaller bowl has a larger proportion of meat to rice and is definitely the way to go; if you're still hungry, just get another bowl or order some soup and blanched veggies. I highly recommend coming here for their braised pork rice and...

This is the minced pork rice restaurant you should never miss. Their rice is well cooked and the side dishes goes with the minced pork rice is absolutely delicious. There used to be several different minced pork rice restaurants in this area but some of other restaurants are either relocated somewhere else or just closed down. This restaurant preserves the traditional Taiwanese minced pork rice cooking for many years and hopefully they can keep up the good work and keep this joint as good as usual. Definitely one of the few places in this area that's worth my...