Shilin Night Market Sausage Stalls
Taipei, Taiwan
Shilin Night Market (士林夜市) in Shilin District, Taipei, is the largest and most visited night market in Taiwan, operating every evening from around 4pm until past midnight. The market centres on a covered food court and a surrounding street grid. Sausage grills are fixtures throughout the outdoor lanes, each vendor operating a small charcoal grill over which fresh pork sausages turn slowly on wire racks. The stalls sell both standard grilled xiangchang on bamboo skewers and da chang bao xiao chang, the format in which a grilled pork sausage is placed inside a split sticky rice sausage. At most stalls a small dice-rolling game sits beside the register: roll a six and your sausage is free. Lines at the most popular stalls stretch into the lane on weekends. The sausage vendors at Shilin are among the clearest expressions of Taiwan's night market food culture, operating in a tradition that has been continuous since the market formalised in the 1950s and 1960s.
