Taiwan: 老董牛肉麵 [Dong's Beef Noodle Soup]

If you didn't know, 牛肉麵 beef noodle soup is absolutely one of my favorite of all time, but it's really hard to find a place with good noodle soup here in the States. Whenever I go back to Taiwan, I eat it as much as I can and this time I decided to try the beef noodle soup from 老董, which won first place at the Beef Noodle Festival that Taipei holds every year.

Got their 半筋半肉牛肉麵 [tendon and meat beef noodle soup]. The soup was really light and you can really taste the flavor from the beef. They use a much more fatty part of the cow so the the beef was tender but a little bit too much fat for my liking. The beef tendon was amazing though. You can tell how long they've been braising and cooking it just from taking one bite since it's so soft. Usually tendons are really hard to cook through.

Their 酸菜 that you add to the noodle soup, which is actually pretty light compared to a lot of places. Nothing special really.

Traditional green onion cake. It's a little different in that they coil it into the shape seen above. My favorite item from 老董.

Their 牛肉捲餅 beef wraps, that's covered with sesame. The inside's marinated beef along with cucumber, green onion, and sauce. It's the first time I've seen a beef wrap that's coated with sesame. Gives it a different texture and flavor!

I went to this place with too much hype and expectations. I do love that it's not oily like some places but don't think it deserves the #1 title. It is an old school place since they've been there for so long. It's a good place to go for really old school beef noodle soup that's light on the palate.