Where to Start a Chiayi Food Walk

The first stop of a food walk decides everything. Get it right and the group settles in; get it wrong and you spend the next two hours catching up. In Chiayi we almost always begin the same way — a bowl of turkey rice before the morning rush, eaten standing up if we have to.

There's a reason for the order. Turkey rice is the city's signature, and the early version, ladled straight from the pot, tastes nothing like the reheated bowls you get at noon. The rice is warm, the slices are thin, and a spoonful of the pan drippings does the rest. It's a small dish, which is the point: you want people curious, not full.

From there we walk. Chiayi's old lanes are narrow and shaded, and the good stalls hide in plain sight — a pork-intestine soup counter with no sign, a tofu-pudding cart that's been behind the same temple since 1987. We move slowly, one or two bites at each stop, so there's room for the next.

A few things we've learned after doing this most mornings:

• Come hungry, not starving. Six small stops add up. Pace yourself at the first three.
• Follow the locals' timing. The milkfish-ball stall opens at six. By eight the best of it is gone.
• Ask about the soup. In Chiayi the soup is how you tell a serious kitchen from a lazy one.

By the time we reach the last stop — usually something cold and sweet — the group has stopped checking phones and started arguing about which bowl was best. That argument, more than any single dish, is the thing we're really serving.