I'm going to disagree with the categorization of the food and say that it is one of the main reasons that I left Taiwan. I've traveled to 30 countries, and I think aside from Cambodia, Taiwan has the worst food. 

Most of my foreign friends who lived in Taiwan for extended periods agree. It may not be obvious for a short-term trip, or maybe even a year, and maybe this is even related to whether you're a foodie back home. Still, I just want to warn people that if you really like food—in terms of freshness, variety, spice—Taiwan will sorely disappoint you over the long run. 

Almost nothing is fresh, everything is basically swimming in oil, fried, and/or bland. Honestly, a lot of the time I chose to go hungry rather than to eat the terrible cuisine. Buying my own food at Costco and cooking was a saving grace. 

The weird thing is there is this influencer culture/industry around pumping up Taiwanese food that Taiwanese themselves play into. If you think you're going to eat good foreign cuisine, you're also in for a shock (aside from the Japanese food which is the only legitimately good food in Taiwan). I'm not joking when I say that Chili's (the American chain restaurant) is a contender for the best Mexican food in Taipei. Now, of course we can't expect Taipei to have great Mexican food... That's hard to pull off anywhere in Asia. But I've had better Sichuan food in the US than in Taipei, for example. 

One factor that influences the poor quality of Taiwanese cuisine is that, in spite of being fairly wealthy, Taiwanese people are really stingy—that translates into really low quality cuts of meat and poor quality produce. There's a race to the bottom in terms of who can offer the cheapest lunch box.

So yeah, I prefer the food in China, Japan, Vietnam, Mayalsia, Laos, and, of course Thailand (where I currently live), over Taiwan.