Taiwan Bakery offers an assortment of savory and sweet baked goods in Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood, located just steps away from the Chinatown Gate landmark (which was gifted to Boston by sister city Taipei in 1982).
Taiwan Bakery
Overall Rating: ★★★★ out of 5 stars
Address: 56 Beach St, Boston, MA 02111
Neighborhood: Chinatown
Perfect For: Large selection of mooncakes and Taiwanese buns
Hours: Daily 7am – 10pm
Reservations: No
Parking: Street
Cost: $10 per person
The interior of Taiwan Bakery is small and snug, but clean and organized. There are a number of displays with individually wrapped breads and pastries. You can browse through a wide assortment of savory options, such as mince meat bun, parmesan cheese ham bun, BBQ pork bun, and scallion hot dog bun. Sweet buns include red bean mochi bun, coconut butter bun, and coconut raisin bun.
There are round flaky swirl pastries with red bean, taro, and green tea fillings, offered in twin bags or boxed as a set of four. Similar flavors are available for crisp-type cookies.
Taiwan Bakery also has a large selection of traditional mooncakes year-round, both with and without egg yolk, available in flavors such as lotus seed, red bean, and matcha. There are also a number of colorful sponge cake rolls infused with green tea, red bean, almond, and coffee flavors.
I have visited this bakery a few times, and service is always attentive and quick in ringing up my purchases. As is the case with other Chinatown bakeries, there are no tables or chairs in the shop, so everything is ordered for takeout only. Items are individually selected by the customer and placed on a tray, then brought to the counter for payment.
My favorite items to order are traditional mooncakes — in particular yolk-less lotus seed ones — as well as Taiwanese-style mooncakes which are flaky swirl pastries. The traditional mooncakes are delicious, dense, and not too sweet. As for the Taiwanese-style flaky swirl mooncakes, I prefer the green tea flavored one but the taro one is a pretty close second. These mooncakes have a flaky layered exterior and within is a sweet flavored paste that is lighter than the dense paste in traditional mooncakes.
Overall, I prefer Taiwanese style bakeries than traditional Chinese bakeries (such as Ho Yuen Bakery next door to Taiwan Bakery), as the food looks more appealing and in line with my personal tastes. Prices at Taiwan Bakery were reasonable, maybe slightly higher on average than other bakeries in Chinatown. If I returned again, I would be interested in trying the coffee sponge cake roll and the coconut bun.
