Yi Mai Mai Pasta: Big, Tasty, Wallet-Friendly Italian Pasta (With Bottomless Corn Soup!)
Intro
Meow meow, hi everyone! Welcome back to our food-rec series. Today, we’re heading out to try a pasta place near Shipai. This shop is tucked away in an alley by a market, and even though it looks pretty unremarkable, it somehow has over 950 reviews on Google Maps. Sometimes there are even people from the neighborhood lining up before it opens! The amazing bang-for-your-buck, plus the bottomless soup and drinks, makes this place a hit with the whole student crowd (me included).
Yi Mai Mai Pasta – Location Info
Yi Mai Mai Pasta on Google Maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/1xd1unx48gff4SoA9
Opening hours:
Monday to Friday: 11:30 – 14:00, 17:30 – 20:00
Saturday & Sunday: Closed
Number of seats: about 15+ (an eight-seater table, four-seaters, two-seaters)
Address: No. 19, Lane 68, Section 2, Shipai Rd., Beitou District, Taipei City 112
Restroom: Yes
Inside Yi Mai Mai Pasta
This time I arrived around 13:53, and there were still one or two groups of customers inside – phew, made it before closing, and there were still seats free. The place is really clean, with hardly any spots that were especially dirty, and the floor wasn’t sticky either. Inside there’s corn soup and drinks you can grab yourself, and you also have to grab your own utensils!
(It seems like the drinks are lemon black tea and winter melon tea every day; if you don’t fancy those, there’s also a pitcher of water on the side to refill from)
So let’s start by giving the corn soup a try! Even though the soup only has corn and ham in it, it’s not the least bit watered down – in fact it has just the kind of thick, rich consistency you’d hope for. There’s also none of that grainy, too-much-flour texture some corn soups have; it’s smooth, with no gritty, throat-catching feeling at all. As for the drinks, I found them much lighter – a mild lemon flavor with a not-too-sweet black tea that never gets cloying.
(Yi Mai Mai Pasta’s menu)
(If you can pack it away, you can also upsize or switch to a baked version, but the baked dishes take a bit longer to come out)
Yi Mai Mai Pasta – Large Pesto Clam Pasta
I’d barely taken a few sips of soup when the food arrived – it came out in about 3 to 5 minutes, seriously fast. I ordered the large pesto clam pasta, and my friend went for the pesto chicken pasta. You probably can’t tell how much there is just from the top-down photo, but that thickness is no joke. Picture the portion at a convenience store multiplied by 1.5 to 2 times – after finishing it you’ll feel completely, satisfyingly stuffed.
The pesto itself is super rich, with a sweet, buttery, cheesy flavor plus a not-too-pronounced basil note (it says basil here, but I’m guessing it’s actually Thai basil). That butter-and-cheese flavor paired with the fresh sweetness of the clams really hits all the marks – looks, smell, and taste. And the key thing is it’s not bland at all; there’s none of that cut-corners feeling. The thick sauce coats the perfectly cooked pasta so that every bite is loaded with that delicious sauce.
As for the pesto chicken pasta, I didn’t actually try it, but I’m guessing it’s basically the same with chicken swapped in – and I’d bet the deliciousness doesn’t lose a single point for it.
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