The restaurant may be quaint, but the specialty here is anything but. A stick-to-your-ribs achievement in pork cookery, large bowls come filled with steamed rice, Hakka pickle, stewed bamboo, and jiggly braised pigs’ knuckles or zhu jiao fan. To mitigate the heft, get yours with a helping of vegetables or a bowl of dou bao tang (豆包湯), a mild, clear soup bobbing with fried tofu balls. Open: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., 5 to 8 p.m.; closed Mondays. Price: from $90 TWD ($3 USD)

Directions: From here, walk north to the next intersection, where you’ll see the entrance of Tainan Art Museum’s colonial-era Building 1. Turn right here and walk about 300 feet on the north side of Youai Street to a cooking station set up right against the sidewalk.

It’s not just about the way the chef uses a ladle to press rice against the hot wok, ensuring no grain is left unbrowned. This family-run eatery, located at the back of the art museum’s Building 1, goes one ingredient beyond conventional fried rice recipes. Whether tossed with beef, mutton, or lamb, the fried rice here comes imbued with the clean, menthol fragrance of white sesame oil which, because of its low smoke point, takes a deft hand to use in stir-fries. Here, the oil provides an almost lemony sharpness and nuttiness. Helpings come generously loaded with thinly sliced meat, and bits of bell pepper, grated carrot, egg, and shredded cabbage more than round out each serving — which is big enough to split three ways. Open: 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., 4 to 8:30 p.m.; closed Sundays. Price: from $60 TWD ($2 USD)

Directions: Take a few strides east to the nearest intersection, follow Kaishan Road north to the traffic circle, then go counter-clockwise around the circle to Qingnian Road. On the north side of the latter road, very near the circle, is an alley labeled Lane 8, Zhongshan Road. About 150 feet into the lane, you’ll find the next stop on your right.

This eatery is known as Mi Gao (米糕), which isn’t so much its name as what happens to be the first of three items listed on its little hand-painted sign. Mi gao is a glutinous rice cake, and the version here is hailed by aficionados of guzao wei (“ancient flavors”), topped with tiny cubes of braised pork belly and a generous sprinkling of pork floss (pork that’s been simmered until it breaks into strands, then thoroughly dried in a wok). The di gua ye tang, or sweet potato-leaf soup, is historically a peasant dish. Today, the dark greens — similar to broccoli rabe — give a snappy bitterness to the mild pork bone broth, which has none of the garlic and shallots used so ubiquitously and aggressively in Taiwanese cooking. Open: 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., 5 to 8 p.m.; closed Sundays. Price: from $30 TWD ($1 USD)

Directions: Retrace your steps to Pigs’ Trotters and Rice (No. 1), walk south to Fuqian Road, then west half a mile to stop 4.

The owners of this stall-turned-storefront do just one thing, and they have it down pat. Marinated nuggets of Spanish mackerel are breaded and deep fried, then left to drain. Customers can pick between having it with a tangle of mian (wheat noodles), mǐ fen (rice-flour vermicelli), or just the fish in soup. Only after an order has been placed is the soup — thickened with cornstarch and flavored with a squirt of black vinegar — poured over the fish, which arrives at the table perfectly plump and flaky. Open: 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. daily. Price: from $60 TWD ($2 USD)

Directions: From here, make your way to Hai’an Road. Walk north to Minsheng Road, then east to one of the street-food epicenters of Tainan at stop 6.

Good luck securing a seat at this daytime hotspot, where the lu mian — a starch-thickened soup packed with shredded vegetables, wheat noodles, and pork-fish paste dumplings — is singularly satisfying. And because locals phone in orders hours before breakfast, the queue for savory congee is just as lengthy, whether it’s yu tou zhou (taro congee, Mondays and Fridays only) or the Tuesday-special cabbage version, gao li cai zhou. Fortunately, take-out rou zong can be procured without much of a delay. These stodgy pork-and-mushroom-filled rice pyramids are prepared southern-style, overflowing with soft, whole peanuts, and boiled, not steamed, making for stickier rice. Across the street from the store you’ll spy the boiling apparatus and bundles of bamboo-leaf-wrapped rou zong hung up to cool. Open: 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.; closed Sundays. Price: from $40 TWD ($1.30 USD)

Directions: Go north on the right-hand side of the road to the next stop.

Mr. Chen, as he prefers to be called, lives two hours to the southeast of Tainan, in an area where most people are Hakka, an ethnic subgroup of Han Chinese complete with its own language and culinary customs that migrated to Taiwan from southern China in the 18th century. Each morning, Mr. Chen sets out from home before dawn to hawk several different kinds of freshly made Hakka-style nian gao (a sweet rice cake) and mochi to morning shoppers. Not quite desserts, not quite confections, everything in his box of delights is made of glutinous rice pounded into paste. Before steaming, varieties get slightly sweetened with white or brown sugar and flavored with adzuki beans, taro, banana, or with a combination of millet, barley, and other grains. Each portion is about the size of a deck of cards and comes wrapped in plastic. The pale colors don’t give much away in terms of flavor, so it’s a bit of a blind tasting for those who don’t speak Mandarin or Taiwanese. Get a second box to nibble on the train ride back to Taipei. Open: 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.; closed Sundays and Mondays. Price: from $30 TWD ($1 USD)

Directions: Continue north on the opposite side of Guohua Street for 150 feet to your next destination.

There’s no satisfactory translation of the savory steamed rice pudding-like dish known in Taiwanese dialect as wha guay. To help, Yi Wei Pin has a chart on the wall that shows the precise order in which the kitchen assembles up to 500 bowls each day: At the bottom there are two freshly cooked shrimp, a piece of pig’s foot, and a tiny strip of pork loin. A little diced braised fatty pork is added, then the bowl is filled with cooked rice that has been ground into a liquid, then steamed. Just before serving, pureed garlic, a sweet-ish spicy sauce, mild wasabi paste, and soy sauce are poured on top of the wheaty-tasting snack. The elements arrive unmixed, so feel free to stir everything together, or as many prefer, don’t, and instead delight in the variety of each bite. Open: 5 a.m. to 5 p.m.; closed Tuesdays. Price: from $30 TWD ($1 USD)

Directions: Take a few steps to the north toward the store where the sign incorporates an image of a toad.

The formula for Taiwanese herbal tea isn’t set in stone. It can be infused with the flavors of verbena, dandelion, the herb known as “heart of the earth” or “heal-all,” or various types of mint. These herbs, along with some grasses, are boiled up into a juice which is then filtered. Some vendors add sugar before cooling and selling the decoction. But not this one, which claims to have been making the stuff since the early 1950s. The result is slightly bitter yet refreshingly light, and goes down especially well after nine stops of hefty street food. The shop also sells the fresh (growing in pots in front of the store) and dried herbs to brew the stuff at home. Open: 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. daily. Price: from $30 TWD ($1)

Directions: The final stop of this food tour is a calorie-burning half-mile away if you walk through the backstreets around the Yuemen, one of the few surviving remnants of the city walls that once kept Tainan safe from rebels and bandits. A slightly longer route (nearly a mile) will take you through the gorgeously aged Shennong Street, lined with crumbling 19th-century merchants’ abodes. On this side of town, it’s also easy to flag down a taxi.