Weird Dining: Diners gnaw away rodent dishes in Taiwan!
I remember my dad dangling fried snacks in the rat-trap every night and showing off his prized catch to excited kids before throwing them on the roadside for the crows to savor them. Had he known that rodent dishes were in demand, he would have made a fortune by now! If you have a taste for weird and exotic food and are bored with the regular meaty fare you get in the eateries, then you must try the exotic rat dishes served in one of the two Taiwan village restaurants. The Ho-la diner and Jiashing restaurant together dish out about 18 kg of rat fare every day. While Ho-la serves ten varieties of rat platters including rat soup and battered, black pepper-dipped, deep-fried rat, Jiashing serves 12 rat platters, focusing on one similar to the more common kung-pao chicken. Rat meat became popular among people who could not afford poultry or meat way back in 1940’s and the flavor seems to have caught on with fervor. Wait, don’t smell a rat yet; the rats that are hunted grow up on crops from the surrounding fields and are not from the sewerage and drains. So, you can safely conclude that were hale and hearty before they reached your platter! The place is so much in demand at the meal times that you have to book table hours in advance if you don’t want to wait. Looks like humans want to gnaw everything that creeps, crawls or walks!