Taiwan Traditional Delicacies Experience, Xiao Long Bao, Chicken vermicelli with mushroom and sesame oil, Tofu strips salad, Bubble milk tea.

About this tour

When Charlie from our team did this three-hour cooking class in Taiwan, we made four classic dishes from scratch — xiao long bao (soup dumplings), chicken vermicelli with mushroom and sesame oil, tofu strips salad, and bubble milk tea. The kitchen is set up for home cooks, not restaurant pros, and the vibe centres on Taiwanese home cooking passed down through generations. You're working with seasonal local produce, and the instructors speak English, Japanese, and Mandarin. It's the kind of class where you actually leave with recipes you'll use, not just photos.

Highlights

• Folded soup dumplings by hand — trickier than it looks, properly satisfying
• Learned the sesame oil trick that changes everything about the chicken dish
• Made bubble tea from components, not just watched someone else do it
• Small group size meant actual one-on-one help when we fumbled
• Took home recipes written in English, genuinely useful
• Tasted everything hot and fresh right after cooking
• No pretension — this is how Taiwanese home cooks actually cook

What to expect

You'll start with basics: how to hold chopsticks for folding, how to tell when your wrappers are the right thickness. The xiao long bao takes the longest — expect to fold dozens of them, get some wrong, then nail a few by the end. Once they're steamed, you eat what you've made, which is the best moment.

The other dishes move faster. The chicken vermicelli is mostly technique — how the sesame oil and heat work together — then assembly. Tofu salad is refreshing and straightforward. Bubble tea feels like the fun finale: you're making the syrup, cooking the pearls, mixing it all up. By hour three you're genuinely tired in that good way, and the table's covered in food you actually built.

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