Chia I

Where the Highway Meets the Harbour

The approach to Gongliao District's dining strip along Renhe Road sets expectations clearly: provincial highway, sea air, and the kind of signage that prioritises legibility over design. Chia I sits in this context without apology. Live fish tanks occupy the entrance, stacked with the morning's haul from Aodi and Keelung ports, and the display shelves beside them carry shellfish, cephalopods, and reef fish arranged by catch rather than by aesthetic. Before you sit down, you have already seen the menu.

This matters as a ritual. In Taiwan's coastal seafood tradition, particularly along the northeastern shore, the pre-meal survey of raw ingredients functions as both selection process and implicit quality statement. Regulars do not consult a printed menu; they walk the tanks and shelves, point at what looks leading that morning, and trust the kitchen's preparation. Visitors who follow the same process tend to eat better than those who arrive with a fixed order in mind.

Thirty Years of Repetition as Refinement

The broader northeastern Taiwan seafood category rewards longevity. Proximity to two working ports, a consistent supply chain, and decades of cooking the same proteins in the same wok builds a specific kind of muscle memory that newer openings simply cannot replicate. Chia I has been operating in this spot for over 30 years, run by the same husband-and-wife team throughout. That duration, along the same highway, with the same sourcing relationships to Aodi and Keelung, is a verifiable credential in a category where freshness and technique compound over time.

For context on Taiwan's wider restaurant range, the island's fine-dining tier includes places like JL Studio in Taichung, logy in Taipei, and GEN in Kaohsiung. Chia I operates in an entirely different register, one where the measure of quality is not tasting-menu architecture but the gap between water and plate. Neither mode is superior; they answer different questions. Chia I answers the question of what northeastern Taiwan's coastal catch tastes like when cooked by someone who has handled it daily for three decades.

The Dishes That Define the Ritual

Two preparations appear consistently in accounts of what to order here. The oil-braised squid arrives with pronounced wok hei, the high-heat smokiness that only a seasoned iron wok and confident fire management produce. Seafood umami runs through it, sharpened by chilli and garlic that add pungency without masking the squid itself. The texture is the point: properly braised squid at this level holds a resistance that neither tips into rubber nor collapses into softness.

The sautéed seaweed with shredded pork and garlic occupies a different register entirely. Seaweed cookery in Taiwan's northeastern coastal tradition tends toward textural contrast, and this preparation delivers it: toothsome where the seaweed resists, silky where it yields, with a briny undertone that reads as quiet rather than aggressive. The garlic and pork function as seasoning agents rather than dominant flavours, which requires restraint from the kitchen and confidence in the seaweed itself.

Both dishes reflect a cooking logic common to the better roadside seafood operations along this stretch of coastline: use fewer interventions, source closer, cook hotter. The comparison to the kind of ingredient-led seafood philosophy that places like Le Bernardin in New York City apply at the fine-dining end is instructive precisely because the underlying principle is the same, even if the execution context, price point, and format are entirely different. Elsewhere in the region, Akame in Wutai Township and Zhu Xin Ju in Tainan represent other modes of ingredient-first cooking specific to their own localities.

The Pacing of a Roadside Seafood Meal

Taiwanese roadside seafood restaurants operate on a different rhythm to formal dining. Dishes arrive as they are ready rather than in a scripted sequence, which means a table of four or five people can receive food continuously over an hour without any single course marking a clear transition. This is not disorganisation; it is a service model built around sharing plates, constant replenishment, and a communal table logic that has more in common with certain Southeast Asian hawker formats than with Western sequential dining.

At Chia I, the practical consequence is that ordering broadly and sharing across the table produces a better experience than treating each dish as an individual portion. Order the squid, the seaweed, and whatever the tanks have that looks alive and active. Let the kitchen sequence as it will. This is the correct way to eat here, and understanding it removes the friction that occasionally frustrates visitors expecting Western service timing.

New Taipei's northeastern coastal corridor also contains other food operations worth building into a visit. Sweet shops like A Gan Yi Taro Balls and A-ba's Taro Ball represent the district's parallel tradition in taro-based desserts, while Amajia, BAK KUT PAN, and Chi Yuan extend the range of what a full day eating through Gongliao and the surrounding area can look like. For broader planning, our New Taipei hotels guide, bars guide, wineries guide, and experiences guide cover the wider district. Accommodation options worth considering for this part of the coast include Volando Urai Spring Spa & Resort in Wulai District for those combining coastal eating with a longer stay in the New Taipei area.

Planning a Visit

Chia I is located at 2 Renhe Road in Gongliao District, positioned along the provincial highway that runs the northeastern coast. Getting there without a car is possible via regional bus routes that connect Gongliao to Ruifang and onward to Taipei, though frequency thins outside peak hours and the walk from the nearest stop requires some tolerance for roadside conditions. Driving or arranging a car from Taipei remains the more practical option for most visitors, with the coastal highway itself forming part of the experience.

Given the operation's longevity and the district's status as a day-trip destination from Taipei on weekends, timing a visit to weekday lunch or early weekday dinner avoids the volume that peak weekend traffic brings to the entire northeastern coastal strip. Phone and booking data are not publicly listed; this is the kind of operation where arrival and direct conversation with the kitchen is the established approach. Emeril's in New Orleans it is not, in terms of booking infrastructure, but that is entirely consistent with what Chia I is and has been for thirty years: a direct, practised, place-specific seafood operation that has earned its continuity through repetition rather than reinvention.