Tainan shrimp rice

What it is

Tainan shrimp rice (蝦仁飯) is a small bowl of rice that has soaked up stock and the pan juices of stir-fried shrimp, with the shrimp piled on top. It is moist and soft, close to a risotto, lightly tinted by soy and gently sweet and salty. The shrimp are velvet shrimp (火燒蝦), a small local species that is red even before cooking.

Where it came from

The best-documented history belongs to one shop, Ai Zai Cheng (矮仔成), which dates itself to 1922. Its founder, Yeh Cheng (葉成), trained at a Japanese restaurant called Mingyue Lou (明月樓) during the colonial period and worked out his own shrimp rice from Japanese flavours. He started with a small stall at the West Market (西門市場), then moved several times along Zhongzheng Road and Haian Road. He was short, and customers turned his name into the nickname Ai Zai Cheng, roughly "Shorty Cheng". The business is now in its fourth generation.

In 2024 the dish was served at the banquet for President Lai Ching-te's inauguration, held in Tainan for the first time. The fourth-generation owner, Sung Chan-wei (宋展維), shared the family method and gave the banquet kitchen a demonstration so it could turn out about 1,000 portions.

How it is made

Velvet shrimp from Tainan's Anping and Xingda harbours are peeled and deveined by hand, then stir-fried with spring onion. Some shops add sugar and soy sauce. The shrimp are lifted out, and the rice goes into the pan with the remaining juices and a generous amount of stock. Ji Pin uses a bonito (柴魚) stock. The rice is tossed or simmered until it has absorbed the liquid, much like Japanese-style cooked rice (炊飯).

How to eat it

A bowl is small, so most people add something. The usual order is shrimp rice with a soft-cooked or fried egg: put the egg on the rice, break the yolk and stir it through. Miso soup or duck egg soup comes alongside, and garlic pork (蒜泥白肉) is a popular extra.