Sally Howard explores the idiosyncratic food scene in Taipei. Ainsley Harriott fiddled with Ms Ivy's buns. When the chef, whose TV series Street Food features Taipei, turned up at the cookery school run by Ivy Chen in her small flat in the Taiwanese capital, he caused a ruckus.mini_story_image_vleft1"His cameras knocked over my oolong tea set," Ivy said, shaking her head. "Then he mixed up my spices and . . . oh my buns!"Ivy's sentence trailed off into the steam, fragrant with star anise and Sichuan peppercorns, coiling from her wok.Like diplomats' wives and blundering celeb chefs before me, I'd come to Ivy's Kitchen to learn how to cook the star turns of Taiwanese street food: spicy pork dumplings, beef noodle soup and the dish synonymous with eating on the hoof in Taipei: pork belly buns (gua bao, popularly the "Taiwanese hamburger")."Taiwan food takes a bit from China, a bit from Japan," Ivy said, as I shaped a dumpling between fingertips and palm."Traditionally our dishes were based on pork and seafood and spiced with mustard greens and fermented black beans; today, with our opening up to China, we see more beef."mini_story_image_hright2I was in Taipei for a taster of the best of Taiwanese cuisine. And I'd come at the right time.In 2014, the Taiwanese-French fusion restaurant, Le Moût, became the nation's first to appear on the San Pellegrino Top 50 restaurant list and a new "simple" food scene, propelled by Taiwan's hipsters (dubbed the "culture youth"), is booming.My day began with a breakfast of youtiao, skinny Chinese doughnuts dunked into warm soya milk, and a morning trip to Si Dong market in the suburb of Shilin, its stalls displaying oddities such as woodear fungus and edible rapeseed flowers.After that we tucked into the fruits of our shopping and cooking labours: a plate of silky fried aubergine with Taiwanese basil; spicy steamed pork dumplings and orange peel; and star anise-infused beef noodle soup.Gua bao were the biggest hit: plump and tender and liberally sauced with pungent pickled mustard greens.Lunch over, Ivy gave me a gift: a box of buttery, shredded-radish pastries."The word for radish in Taiwanese sounds like 'good luck is coming'," she said."Food is always auspicious as well as . . ." she giggled . . . "delicious".It was a huge appetite, rather than luck, that was required for the afternoon ahead: a whistle-stop tour of Taipei's quirkier dining joints in the company of Alex Lin, a guide who is also one of Taipei's tens of thousands of Instagram food bloggers.full_story_image_hleft3Our first port of call was Modern Toilet, a restaurant in which diners sit on loos decorated with cartoon toilet seats and tuck into novelty dishes - including chocolate ice cream styled to resemble faeces - eaten from miniature cisterns and bedpans: a truly weird culinary experience that's a big hit with young Taiwanese.There was a more conventional menu at teahouse Smith & Hsu. British teas are suddenly hip in Taipei, with a two-month waiting list for afternoon tea bookings at five-star hotels.story_article_left1Smith & Hsu, as the name suggests, is a tribute to British tea culture with a Taiwanese twist, its scones laced with dragon's-eye fruit; and Taiwanese mountain oolongs jostling for space in Smith & Hsu's selection of 100 speciality teas, with classic Earl and Lady Greys.Manager May Chang told me they turn out 20 000 handmade scones a month."We take our butter, jams and cream from 'Durnshire', England," she said. "And our customers love lemon curdly (sic)."The hour to arrive at Ningxia Night Market is 8pm, when the woks are at full sizzle and stall-side plastic tables are packed elbow-to-elbow with smiling groups of young Taiwanese tucking into platefuls of xiaochi, or "small eats" - a Chinese food category somewhere between street food and tapas.Through a mouthful of tofu, my guide Alex explained why xiaochi are such a hit."Taiwanese don't want to choose between this dish or that," she said. "They want to eat, eat, eat: all the time, little bites."After a feather-light plate of oyster vermicelli and fermented "stinky" tofu (the stinkier the better, Alex advised), it was off, once more, to the mountain foothills of Shilin for another one-of-a-kind Taipei food experience - a taster at one of the city's popular 24-hour "shrimping bars" (corrugated sheds erected around mountain-water pools).mini_story_image_vright4We bought our tray of bait and rented a fishing rod at a front desk staffed by a woman in a Hello Kitty jumper, then took a poolside seat on a plastic chair.Next to us a group of hipsters, wearing button-down granny cardigans and coxcomb hairdos, stared fixedly at the water, rods cocked.Alex explained the drill: thread your hook with a bait of pig's liver, grab a beer and wait for a nibble. Fifteen minutes later and, with no nibbles my end, the hipsters had a full basket.They padded over to the small barbecue area at the back of the shed to decapitate and salt their quarry before slinging the shrimps on the flames of a communal grill.A catch-less half-hour later, I handed the rod to our taxi driver, Mr Song. He baited his line and, adroitly, caught five grey-green shrimp in quick succession."He used to be a teenage shrimping champion," Alex explained. "Though he wants to tell you that it would be better if he brought his own bait: all the serious night-shrimpers bring their own bait.""What will he do with them?" I asked Alex, watching Mr Song survey his catch."Well, Mr Song has high cholesterol, so sadly he can't eat them," said Alex. "He says he will take them home and fry them with some chrysanthemum leaves for his wife."There's another Taiwanese foodie proverb. "Some people prefer liquor, others prefer tofu, and some even like rotten salmon." It loosely translates as: "To each his own".sub_head_start IF YOU GO sub_head_endWHERE TO STAY:With its marble-fitted suites, the Mandarin Oriental Taipei offers doubles from £355 (about R7 000).Charming City Hotel has doubles from £60 (R1 100).WHERE TO EAT:Ivy's Kitchen Cookery School.Modern Toilet Restaurant.Smith & Hsu.Hello Kitty Sweets Café.ChuenCheng Shrimp Fishing.FURTHER INFORMATION:Welcome to Taiwan.- The Sunday Telegraph..