At the dusk market, affordable sushi shops let you try grilled salmon belly sushi for just a coin.

Text & Photos /Ahmon

After descending from Fushi Garden, I headed straight to the dusk market to find this famous Huatian Sushi. Many people come here after visiting Taiping, and Xinguang Dusk Market is quite large, with two huge motorcycle parking lots outside—parking is very convenient. Once inside the market, I looked for signs and found Huatian Sushi located at 5th Road, 8th Street, which was pretty easy to locate. The stall was surrounded by a huge crowd, and I was completely stunned by the sight.

This is the checkout counter, and on the other side is the sushi display case. You queue up in order to pick the sushi you want, then come here to pay. There are also staff guiding customers, so just follow the queue and pick your sushi—that’s all there is to it.

The refrigerated cabinet has fresh raw fish, with quite a variety. If you want freshly made nigiri or grilled sushi, you can just tell the staff and order them individually, as there are very few types of raw fish nigiri on the shelves.

There are reference charts showing pictures and prices. The cheapest one is about $25, similar to regular sushi shops, and there are also some higher-priced nigiri, such as scallops and spaghetti eel. If needed, these can also be made into grilled sushi.

There’s a special order form for nigiri sushi. Some fish are also divided into belly and regular cuts, with price differences—be sure to check when ordering. After filling out the form, hand it to the staff, then go to the counter to pay and pick up your sushi.

Tofu skin series sushi
The portion size is about the same as at other sushi shops, but the ingredients are much more luxurious—colorful and beautiful, making tofu skin sushi, which I didn’t really want to eat, suddenly look very tempting. Some have lobster salad, others have two-color fish roe, pearl oysters, octopus, and even basic options like pork floss, corn, and black beans.

Battleship series sushi
The ingredients are similar to the tofu skin ones, but they also include sea urchin sushi—and it’s only 50 dollars each, so cheap, how could I not buy it? Good stuff sells out almost instantly.

Rolled sushi
There are all kinds of flavor combinations, making it hard to decide which one to pick. There are even square-shaped rolled sushi—I never would’ve imagined that.

The flavors are really quite varied, including red bean sticks, smoked chicken, and taro. But common ones like shrimp soft and sesame aren’t available here, which is kind of interesting—no wonder so many people come to buy.

Nigiri sushi
Most of them aren’t raw fish—there’s duck meat, crab meat, tamagoyaki, etc. For raw fish, you have to order it freshly made, which is fresher.

Creative sushi
These shaped sushi are the first I’ve ever seen—spherical, long strip-shaped—the chef is really amazing, how do they even make these? The colors are super pretty, and I want to try one of each, but these creative sushi are also more expensive.

Seaweed sushi combo
If you don’t know what to buy or are in a hurry, you can get a pre-packed meal box from the shop—easy and convenient to take away.

There’s also sashimi, tekka rolls, and salad. A box of sashimi is $200, available in single fish types or mixed, and you can choose thick or thin slices.

Hand rolls
There are various flavors of hand rolls, all priced uniformly at $30—so cheap. There are also vegetable rolls, probably for vegetarian customers, and they’re pretty big too—just $20 each.

The boxes come in large, medium, and small sizes. The photo above shows the largest box, which can easily hold 10–20 sushi pieces.

Grilled salmon belly sushi $40, red snapper belly nigiri $40, salmon belly nigiri $25, scallop nigiri $80

Since I came all this way, I figured I shouldn’t just buy regular sushi—that’d be like leaving treasure untapped. So I specially ordered a few nigiri and donburi sushi to try. Aside from the scallop, the prices seemed pretty reasonable. From left to right: grilled salmon belly sushi, red snapper belly nigiri, salmon belly nigiri, scallop nigiri. I originally wanted to try yellowtail, but it was sold out, so I went with red snapper. The fish slices were all thick and generous, while the vinegar rice was only about half the size of the fish—its sourness was barely noticeable, so the overwhelming feeling was just the fresh fish filling your mouth. So satisfying, somewhat similar to the giant nigiri at Taipei’s Sanwei Shokudo, really fresh and tasty, even better than Sanwei’s, though the sauce on top was very sweet and overpowered the rice, getting a bit cloying toward the end. The grilled salmon belly was the best of the four, with excellent aroma and texture. Next was the scallop nigiri, but the scallop was just too expensive. The red snapper was actually the least satisfying for me.

Delicacy scallop sushi $35, salmon roe shrimp sushi $45, two-color fish roe battleship, herring roe nigiri, smoked duck nigiri, unknown tofu skin sushi
The delicacy scallop and salmon roe shrimp have a rolled sushi base with extra toppings added on top. I personally prefer the delicacy scallop—one order comes with about three pieces, slightly spicy, and pretty tasty. The salmon roe shrimp has plenty of salmon roe—if you love salmon roe, this is the one. I didn’t note the prices of the last four, but they weren’t expensive in my memory, with the salmon roe shrimp being the priciest. The herring roe nigiri paired with lemon is really good—I loved it, too bad I didn’t buy more.

Overall,
the sushi here has a wide variety of flavors and types. Both nigiri and sashimi are quite fresh and thickly cut, and the prices are also quite reasonable. If you’re looking to eat sushi, I’d highly recommend coming here. The above is just my personal opinion and is for reference only.

HowToTrip Sushi
Phone: 04-22115668
Address: No. 470, Shijia Road, Taiping District, Taichung City (Inside Xinguang Twilight Market, 8th Lane, Wulu Road)
Price: $12 and up

 阿mon台湾趴趴走~Food, travel, photography, outdoor shooting
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