What it is
Night-market steak (夜市牛排), also called Taiwanese-style steak (台式牛排), is a cheap steak dinner served on a cast-iron plate that is still spitting when it reaches the table. The beef shares the plate with noodles, an egg and mixed vegetables, all under a thick brown sauce. Night-market stalls and budget steak houses both sell it.
Where it came from
Western food was a luxury in 1970s Taiwan. The cheap steak dinner is usually credited to Sun Dong-bao (孫東寶), a former Western-cuisine head chef. In 1976 he began selling sizzling steaks from a lane off Bade Road (八德路) in Taipei. His pitch was price, not style, and a steak house chain now carries his name.
The iron plate has two suggested sources. One is Japanese teppanyaki. The other is Hong Kong, where the Maxim's (美心) Western restaurants served iron-plate sets from 1956. The food writer Fan Chiao-hsin (范僑芯) thinks the Hong Kong link is the more direct one. Either way, the plate kept food hot, which suited diners who disliked cold meals.
Local conditions shaped the rest. Dairy was expensive and wine scarce, so the sauces leaned on soy, tomato and starch. Potatoes were unfamiliar and loose rice is awkward on a plate eaten with knife and fork, so noodles became the side. By 2006 the Bull Demon King (牛魔王) stall at Shida night market in Taipei had been trading for more than 20 years.
How it is made
The beef is trimmed and often marinated first; one Shida stall leaves it for six hours and fries it nearly well done. The meat then goes onto a very hot iron plate with noodles, a raw egg that sets on the metal, and frozen mixed vegetables such as peas, corn and carrot (三色豆). The sauce goes over last. Black pepper and mushroom sauces are built on onion, garlic and mushroom with soy, tomato sauce and starch. Some chains stopped using raw egg after a salmonella outbreak in 2009.
How to eat it
A large paper napkin comes with the meal; hold it up in front of the plate to catch the spitting oil. Menus offer several cuts and often a chicken cutlet, and you choose black pepper or mushroom sauce. Budget steak houses often include unlimited corn soup and black tea, plus garlic bread. Some diners pour the soup over the food while the plate is still hot.
