Wang Family Radish Cake & Rice Sausage

Review

Wang Family Radish Cake & Rice Sausage sits near the Sanmin Road entrance of Taichung's Second Market and is a breakfast stall old Taichung residents know well, billed as decades old. One blogger says they have been buying takeout here for ten years and mentions an elderly relative who never stopped craving it. News reports spell the name variously — 'Wang Jia', 'Wang Ji' or 'Lao Wang' — but they all mean this stall.

The classic order is a set: radish cake with rice sausage comes with a fried egg for NT$75, radish cake, taro cake and rice sausage together are NT$85, and radish cake with rice sausage alone is NT$60. The radish cake is thick, old-style and rice-based, soft in texture and simply seasoned, with no shredded radish or pork sauce, relying on the house sweet chili sauce for flavor; the sticky rice sausage is well filled with a fragrant pan-fried skin, and the taro cake has a pleasant chew. Soups include a NT$45 mixed soup with pork blood, white radish, fried tofu, fish cake and meatballs, on the heavy side, and a NT$30 radish soup that is light and sweet.

Online opinion is clearly split. Fans say one set fills you up and the rice sausage and taro cake are musts; detractors find the radish cake bland and the sauce salty. Some note the rice sausage and taro cake are occasionally not heated through, and the owner's blunt manner strikes some as rude, while others see it simply as a straightforward personality.

Weekdays are moderately busy, but on weekend mornings the line can stretch onto the street, dine-in seats are hard to find, you may not save a seat before collecting your food, and takeout boxes cannot be eaten inside. It is open until 6 p.m., closing early at 3 p.m. on Thursdays. If you take it home, reheating in a rice cooker makes the radish cake even softer.

It suits those curious about an old-fashioned market breakfast who don't mind a love-it-or-leave-it flavor. First-timers should get the three-item set with sweet chili sauce and a bowl of radish soup to balance it.