During one of my visits to Tainan (October 2018), I finally tried their coffin bread. Thanks to a local acquaintance I was directed to the restaurant that invented the dish in the 40s and it is still in operations.
Coffin bread (or coffin toast bread, or guancai ban, 府城棺材板) is a dish where the toasted bread is used as a bowl. Given its rectangular shape and the use of a piece of bread as a “lid”, it does look like a coffin. The bread is filled with starchy soup of seafood, vegetables chicken, or curry. Given Tainan’s contact with the Western world it was probably inspired by the Western chowder.
The visit
The shop is called Chikan Eatery in English and is located inside a market. At noon, on a Sunday, it was open for lunch, while many of the other stalls were closed. I and my group were directed to a secondary dining room just across the main restaurant.
Coffin bread was available in various versions: curry, chicken, seafood and a mixed version that I chose.
The soup was very thick and concealed pieces of squid, chicken, and vegetables. It was good, a very filling dish.
I also had deep-fried baby oysters, another local dish.
The eatery has a website (not recently updated) that further explains how the coffin bread concept went about and was named:
The original name for Coffin Toast was“Chicken Liver Plank”. In the 40’s, chicken liver was a fine ingredient. As a result, Hsiung Liu-Yi [the founder of the restaurant] chose chicken liver as its stuffing and named after it. The stuffing tasted like French foie gras and then became very popular at that time. Those, no matter came from local or other places, would visit SAKARIBA and enjoy the snack.
Once there a professor (NTU) came to SAKARIBA and tasted the“Chicken Liver Plank”. After the meal, he praised to it and said to Hsiung Liu-Yi that its shape was a coffin alike. Therefore, Hsiung Liu-Yi finally decided to change its name as Coffin Toast. Since then the snack has become famous and popular in Tainan.
The check
To order, we were provided a Chinese form. Having someone who spoke Chinese was of course an advantage, but with some creativity it should not be difficult to ask for their main dish even without Chinese. The coffin bread cost 60 NTD (less than 2 USD). The oysters were 150 NTD.
It was certainly great to have a lunch at the original place of the coffin bread. Tainan is a city full of culinary points of interest.
Where in Tainan:
No.180, Zhongzheng Rd., West Central Dist
Address in Chinese: 台南市中正路康樂市場沙卡里巴內180號
Website: https://www.guan-tsai-ban.com.tw/tw/index.php