Pinglin Tea Cuisine 坪林茶餐
Pinglin Tea Cuisine is featured among the local specialties of Taiwan.
Pinglin Tea Cuisine (坪林茶餐) is food made with tea in Pinglin District (坪林區), New Taipei (新北市), a district whose main cash crop is Wenshan baozhong tea (文山包種茶). More than 80 per cent of Pinglin's residents are tea farmers, and tea gardens cover close to a thousand hectares, according to a 2022 report by SETN (三立新聞網).
Ingredients
Most shops on Pinglin Old Street (坪林老街) build their snacks around local tea. SETN lists baozhong tea eggs, tea ice lollies, tea-flavoured steamed buns, tea nougat and tea-oil vermicelli (茶油麵線). On the same street, Tian Mama Tea Cuisine (田媽媽茶料理) serves tea drinks, meals and snacks with the tea's aroma worked into the food.
The Pinglin Farmers' Association (坪林農會), whose predecessor was founded in 1919, set up tea-processing and tea-seed-oil plants, and in 2015 it opened the Pinglin Tea Industry Culture Hall (坪林茶產業文化館). The hall explains tea leaves and tea-seed oil, and one of its hands-on sessions pairs garlic with tea-seed oil.
Where it comes from
Pinglin lies at the south-eastern end of New Taipei on the Beiyi Highway (北宜公路) between Taipei and Yilan, with the Beishi River (北勢溪) running through it. Chinese Wikipedia ties its tea to the land: an elevation of 400 to 500 metres, acidic and free-draining soil, and rain in every season. From the Japanese colonial period most Pinglin tea was shipped to Southeast Asia. Pinglin was once a collection and trading centre for tea, and its old street, about 200 metres long, is centred on Baoping Temple (保坪宮).
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.