French Toast Taipei – Succulent Breakfast Choices in Taipei City

A lot of people wonder where they can get French toast in Taipei, and more importantly, which restaurants serve it up the best. For us, two main restaurants come to mind.

The Diner

The Diner is our first choice for everything Western in terms of breakfast, brunch and lunch due to the wide variety of American style dishes available. Whether it is omelets, Rueben sandwiches or thick milkshakes, the Diner gets it right. They also have great French toast and pancakes.

Most Taiwanese think of French toast as a dessert or something that goes along with afternoon tea. Often when going to a Taiwanese western like restaurant there might be French toast on the menu but will only be offered in a sweet way such as with strawberries. While we certainly do not mind that, we more often then not prefer the so-called “saltier” version as the Taiwanese put it with maple syrup even though this is about as sweet as it gets. The Diner gets this and offers nicely prepared toast with butter and a decent size bowl of maple syrup in addition to hash browns, eggs, bacon and freshly squeezed juice. We emphasize the maple syrup portion because unlike the west, maple syrup is not on every table readily available like ketchup.

The hash browns by the way are one of the few places that have American-like shredded hash browns instead of the typical potato-cake looking hash browns you find at local breakfast shops. We are picky when it comes to breakfast food and appreciate this more than we can convey in an article.

Another great thing about the Diner is that in addition to French toast there are a wide variety of pancake options, including a long list of ingredients such as blueberries, chocolate chips and strawberries for making your own customized pancakes. These are great alternatives for a sugary, breaded breakfast high in carbs.

The owner of the Diner in fact was a chef for nearly a decade in the US at several different restaurants before deciding to come back to Taiwan and open his own joint. A married couple now runs the restaurant, with locations in in two different areas. Previously there was a third one but it shut down for whatever reason.

1 Bite 2 Go

An alternative to the Diner is 1 Bite 2 Go located across from 101 on Xinyi Rd. This restaurant prides itself on more of a contemporary look, and is well known for its sandwiches. The French toast here is pretty good and is served with your choice of eggs. The downside is there are no hash browns and instead cut up fried potatoes that gives the breakfast a little heavier and southern American feel. We prefer the Diner’s choice but this is still good and is a decent second option. The staff at this place can be hit or miss in terms of manners and at times you get the feeling they think they are too good to be there, a trend though we see with many girls working at restaurants in Taiwan in particular.