《迷宮飯》Tells Us What You Eat Defines Who You Are: The Immigration History Behind Taiwan Beef Noodles, Banquet Tables, and Stinky Tofu

If you want to know where someone comes from, you might not need to ask about their place of birth first. Instead, you could ask: What do you crave when you're sick? What must you eat during the New Year? When your stomach growls in the middle of the night, is the first thing that comes to mind beef noodles, salty congee, braised pork rice, or a bowl of your mother's soup? The answer might be closer to a person's life than an ID card. This is the most interesting part of 《迷宮飯》. On the surface, it's a fantasy story about adventurers who, lacking food, turn monsters in a labyrinth into dishes; but as the story progresses, you realize that the author, Kyoko Kuitsuki, is actually repeatedly asking a very simple question: Why do people eat? And what do they choose to eat? The official promotion for the final volume of the manga even uses 'Eating is living' as its core slogan. From the beginning, when monsters are treated as ingredients, to the completely different reactions different races have to the same dish, 《迷宮飯》 gradually turns 'eating' into a method of understanding survival, culture, and even differences between people. If you bring this question back to Taiwan, you'll find that every time we enter a breakfast shop, night market, or noodle shop, we're actually eating the history of an entire island. Because dishes like beef noodles, banquet tables, and stinky tofu, which today seem as 'Taiwanese' as can be, almost all have a story behind them of movement, collision, and then becoming something new. The most impressive thing about 《迷宮飯》 is that the same food can mean different worlds to different people. In 《迷宮飯》, there's an interesting setting: For ordinary adventurers, the monsters in the labyrinth are first and foremost enemies; but for Shinshi, who has long studied monster cuisine, they are also ingredients. Leo is curious about monsters, while Marushier initially often can't accept the idea of 'eating monsters' at all. The official character introduction even specifically sets Shinshi as someone who has long studied monster food and insists on self-sufficiency in the labyrinth. The same monster is disgusting to some, dangerous to others, and the first question for some is: 'How can I cook it?' The difference isn't just a matter of taste. Because from a young age, we're shaped by the environment we're raised in, what we eat at home, what's considered edible, and what's not, all secretly drawing the boundaries of our world. So 'what you eat defines who you are' isn't about determining nationality by eating a bowl of beef noodles, but rather that our memories of food are inherently part of our identity. This is especially true in Taiwan. Taiwan's food culture has never been a simple straight line. The local food knowledge accumulated by indigenous peoples, the various groups that migrated at different times, such as the Hokkien and Hakka, the food influences left by the Japanese colonial period, the military dependents' village culture after the war, and the new immigrant groups from Southeast Asia and other places, have all continuously brought new flavors to this island. Official documents describing Taiwan's food history repeatedly emphasize that 'diversity and fusion' is one of its most important features. In other words, the most interesting thing about Taiwanese cuisine might be precisely that it's hard to find a so-called 'pure bloodline.'