British expats bring taste of UK to Taiwan with hand-made baked goods

British expats bring taste of UK to Taiwan with hand-made baked goods

2023-03-01

Immigrants from all over the world come to Taiwan where they find work, start families, and contribute to making the island so special. In today’s installment of "An Immigrant Story," FTV reporter Stephany Yang takes us to meet two British expats who have opened up shop in Taipei. There, they sell handmade British-style sausages and freshly baked goods like sausage rolls, Scotch eggs, and steak and ale pie. Over the years, they have won many loyal patrons from the expat community and even have many local Taiwanese followers. Let’s take a look!

First, flour the soft-boiled egg to allow the sausage to stick better.

Then, flatten out the sausage and wrap the egg into the sausage.

After that, put the ball into the egg yolk and coat the sausage with panko bread crumbs. It’s finally time to fry it for six minutes. This is the weekend special here, called a Scotch egg. It’s a popular dish that originated in the town of Whitby in 19th century England.

Lee Thomas
Co-founder
We are not limited to just doing sausages; we do a range of British style meat pies, we do ready meals that are microwavable that a very easy. We do things like chicken codron bleu and chicken Kiev. We do stuff that that is basically the full package. We are a one-stop shop.

Dom Grant
Co-founder
Apart from the sausages, all of our other products are hand-made. The same with the sausages, it’s all very natural. We use very good quality ingredients; we don’t put any preservatives. It is good, well-made food and these kinds of products are not widely available either.

Besides Scotch eggs, steak and ale pie is another bestseller, and is a classic dish found in most pubs around England. All of these goods are hand-made daily by Lee and his son, Curtis. They say they make at least 50 to 60 steak and ale pies daily, and around 2,000 pies a month.

Lee Thomas
Co-founder
For example, with the meat pies, they are easy to make. It is really simplistic. But, it is time-consuming. Each pie is going to take approximately two minutes to make. At the moment, we are probably making in excess of 2,000 pies a month. Plus, all the other products. As Dom just said, these are all hand-made. There is no machine to make them. It is quite a laborious job, but the end product is worth it.

Dom and Lee are from the U.K. After stints in the finance industry and as an operations director for a nightclub abroad, the two moved to Taiwan and decided to bring a taste of home with them by opening up a store. In the beginning, they simply made sausages. But later on, they transitioned into making other British delicacies such as Scotch eggs, steak and ale pie, sausage rolls, shepherd’s pie, and more. Aside from making all their goods by hand, they also don’t add any preservatives. Over the years, they have won many loyal patrons from the U.K., the expat community, and even the local Taiwanese community.

Dom Grant
Co-founder
We saw a gap in the market for sausages that we missed the flavors from home. The brand was launched in 2015, and we are in a number of different supermarkets now.

Lee Thomas
Co-founder
Our customer base is probably 60% Taiwanese and 40% foreigners. But again, that has changed. When we first started it was mainly foreigners that came in. Because they say, "Wow, you got the homeland food in." But now, as I mentioned to you before, a lot of the reasons I think is that a lot of Taiwanese study overseas and they pick up the culture of the food. When they come back to Taiwan they want to find that food again and they found it here.

The team hopes to keep churning out even more British baked goods and offer their patrons a taste of the U.K. in Taiwan.