Why Taiwanese People Love Outdoor Grilling

It was one of the most Taiwanese things I’d ever seen in the Bay: a crowd of hungry people lined up in front of a long, makeshift charcoal grill on Good to Eat Dumplings’ string light–bedecked side patio, everyone gawking at the huge-ass chicken cutlets and Taiwanese sausages charring and sizzling over the flames. More than anything, what hit me was the distinctive smell of shacha, aka Taiwanese barbecue sauce, wafting through the air, smoky and a little bit spicy, undergirded with the pungency of dried fish — a smell intimately familiar to anyone who’s ever strolled through a Taiwanese night market.

“We missed that shacha-filled aroma,” says Angie Lin, who runs Good to Eat Dumplings along with her wife Tony Tung, the restaurant’s chef. “It made all of us so excited.”

Last September’s Taiwanese-style barbecue event at Good to Eat was probably my favorite food event of the year. This weekend, the Emeryville restaurant is running it back, this time for two nights — July 29 and 30 — instead of one, in hopes of satisfying what wound up being a huge demand. As it turns out, Lin and Tung weren’t the only ones nostalgic for Taiwanese barbecue.

The inaugural edition of the event took place during the Mid-Autumn Festival, which for Taiwanese people is probably even more closely associated with outdoor grilling than the Fourth of July is for Americans. As Lin explains it, people in Taiwan have always loved grilling outdoors, but it became codified as a national pastime of sorts in the early ’80s, when a barbecue sauce company launched a big advertising campaign during the lead-up to Mid-Autumn Festival. Lin remembers TV commercials that emphasized how nice it was to sit and chat in the park while skewers of marinated meat sizzled on the grill.

“For Taiwanese people, you need to get together [for Mid-Autumn Festival] anyway,” she says. “You want to stay outside to enjoy mooncake and watch the full moon. And during that whole season, the temperature in Taiwan is just right.”

These days, almost everyone grills for Mid-Autumn Festival — and, really, all throughout the relatively cool and comfortable fall months. But Taiwanese grilling culture is a different beast from how most Americans think of grilling. The grills are small and portable, and the cuts of meat tend to be smaller too — no one is grilling thick steaks. One of my fondest memories from living in Taiwan was when my co-workers slapped a metal grate on top of the rim of a car tire for an impromptu grilling session. Squatting on the sidewalk while you devour a fistful of shacha-slathered meat skewers: That’s the quintessential Taiwanese experience.

Then, there’s the unique Taiwanese taste. For many Americans, “barbecue sauce” tends to connote a sweet and tangy tomato- or vinegar-based condiment. Taiwanese shacha, on the other hand, is soy sauce–based, seasoned with an assortment of intensely flavored spices, aromatics and, usually, dried brill fish and dried shrimp. It’s a cousin of Southeast Asian satay, Lin explains — very savory and loaded with umami.

Mid-Autumn Festival falls on Sept. 29 this year, but Lin and Tung figured they’d kick off their grilling season a little bit early. So, this weekend’s event will feature several staples of Taiwanese barbecue and night market culture. There will be grilled chicken cutlets or pork chops (they’re still deciding), corn on the cob, fish balls, fish cakes, pork blood cakes and foil packets filled with vegetables and mushrooms. Most of the items will get a liberal brush of shacha before they’re thrown onto the grill.

Each $55 ticket will buy you six tokens that you can use at various stations at the event — two tokens for a larger main course and one token for almost everything else. The idea, Lin says, is for each ticket to provide for a full, and very filling, meal for one person: say, a big, juicy grilled chicken cutlet, a couple of side dishes, a bowl of lu rou fan and a cold beer.

Many of the items will be new to diners whose only exposure to Taiwanese food is boba or popcorn chicken or beef noodle soup — the handful of dishes that have gotten mainstream exposure. And, really, what sets Good to Eat apart from the bulk of the Bay Area’s Taiwanese restaurants is Lin and Tung’s commitment to sharing their love of the culture with their customers.

Toward that end, they’ve added another fun wrinkle to this barbecue event: a Taiwanese sausage station where they’ll not only introduce diners to plump, sweet Taiwanese sausages but also to the very Taiwanese game of sausage gambling. At every traditional sausage stand in Taiwan, Lin explains, they’ll always have a bowl with four dice and the option to bet against the sausage stand owner. If you get a lucky roll? “You can win a lot of sausages.”

“For us, it’s not for gambling; it’s more for fun,” Lin says. Guests at this weekend’s event are sure to walk away with full stomachs — and, if they’re lucky, they might even get three sausages for the price of one.

Good to Eat Dumplings (1298 65th St., Emeryville) will host its Taiwanese barbecue event on Sat., July 29 and Sunday, July 30, from 4:30–9:30 p.m. Tickets for specific time slots are available online (and are expected to sell out early).