The other day at 886, a new Taiwanese restaurant on St. Mark’s Place, I couldn’t help but notice that the two men seated next to me seemed focussed less on the meal in front of them than on discussing where else in the city they could get Taiwanese food. “Have you been to Ho Foods?” one asked. He hadn’t, so his friend filled him in on the tiny shop, also new, which specializes in braised-beef noodle soup, a national dish of Taiwan. Another diner, overhearing, chimed in.

“Three cup” wings are glazed with soy sauce, rice wine, and sesame oil, à la the classic Taiwanese three-cup chicken. Photograph by Zachary Zavislak for The New Yorker

Who could blame them? In New York, Taiwanese food has long been a limited commodity, and we’ve been missing out on a lot: the small island has an incredibly rich food culture, which overlaps with cuisines from some regions of mainland China and is also influenced by Japan, which colonized the country for fifty years, and by aboriginal tradition. Most New Yorkers are familiar with imports like bubble tea and gua bao, the style of pork bun popularized by Eddie Huang, of Baohaus, and David Chang, of Momofuku. (Both foods exemplify a particular springy, elastic texture that’s identified in Taiwan by the letter “Q.”) Some have ventured to restaurants in Queens, like Flushing’s wonderful Main Street Imperial Taiwanese Gourmet. In the past few years, a growing group of young Taiwanese-Americans have been doing an excellent job of showing how much more there is to explore, and of fulfilling the cravings of diners already in the know.

Lo ba beng, also known as lu rou fan, a comfort food that is near-ubiquitous in Taiwan, here features braised pork belly, bamboo shoots, daikon, and a soft-boiled egg over seasoned rice. Photograph by Zachary Zavislak for The New Yorker

When Ho Foods, a pop-up that turned brick and mortar in January, started serving breakfast, one Saturday in November, forty people lined up before the door opened, clamoring for staples that are rare in Manhattan: fresh-made sweetened soy milk, served warm or cold, with a long, twisty cruller for dipping; a scrambled-egg bao; a log of sticky rice, wrapped in plastic like a burrito around a piece of cruller, a wad of sweet pork floss, and pickled mustard greens and turnips. In the evening, the line is for the chef Richard Ho’s stellar soup, made with supple noodles, spongy coins of beef shank, and a twenty-four-hour bone-and-marrow broth, seasoned with rock sugar, star anise, and cinnamon, as fragrant as a bakery.

Drunken clams with chilis and Thai basil, a Taiwanese beer-house snack. Photograph by Zachary Zavislak for The New Yorker

Ho joins the sisters Hannah and Marian Cheng, whose Mimi Cheng’s, in the East Village and Nolita, serves dumplings like the ones their mother makes, stuffed with ground chicken and zucchini. In 2016, Trigg Brown and Josh Ku opened Win Son, in East Williamsburg, showcasing slightly cheffy but faithful renditions of night-market treats, like oyster omelettes, popcorn chicken, and stinky tofu (fermented until it takes on a barnyard funk), and home-style dishes including the evocatively named cangying tou, or “fly’s head,” a crunchy stir-fry of minced garlic chives, ground pork, and fermented black beans. Kris Kuo—of Taiwan Bear House, a bento-box counter in Chinatown—and William Tabler recently opened the Braised Shop, in the East Village, offering a deeply satisfying iteration of the roadside specialty luwei, for which you choose your own ingredients, to be braised quickly in a richly seasoned broth.

In a narrow, clubby space on the busiest block of St. Mark’s Place, 886 is the most fun of the new wave of restaurants opened in the past few years by young Taiwanese-Americans. Photograph by Zachary Zavislak for The New Yorker

The most fun of the bunch is 886, named for Taiwan’s international calling code. Tucked into a narrow space, 886 (from Eric Sze and Andy Chuang, of a nearby noodle bar called the Tang) has a clubby vibe and a menu that seems designed to appeal to someone coming off a long, drunken night of karaoke. But, from snacks to stir-fries, the food is rooted in tradition. The wings are “three cup,” referring to the classic Taiwanese chicken dish made with soy sauce, rice wine, and sesame oil. The Sausage Party is essentially a hot dog, with a bun made, brilliantly, from sticky rice, and a candied, fatty, taut-skinned Taiwanese sausage, piled high with cilantro, shaved duck-egg yolk, and crispy shallot. One of the men next to me, offered hot sauce, said to his friend, “This place is kind of Americanized. Taiwanese people don’t really eat hot sauce.” The friend disagreed: “My mom does!” (886, dishes $7-$18. Ho Foods, dishes $6-$14.50. Mimi Cheng’s, dumplings $9.75-$12.25. Win Son, dishes $5-$23. The Braised Shop, ingredients $2.50-$3.50.) ♦