熊家萬巒豬腳
📍Location: Pingtung, Wanluan
Personal Review: Eating with a group = enjoying many dishes + not too expensive!
Super filling and splitting the bill makes it very cost-effective!
Summary: After eating and drinking to our hearts' content, we also took a portion of pork knuckles home!
When in Wanluan, you definitely have to try the pork knuckles!
This time we visited the famous Xiong Family Wanluan Pork Knuckles, which is well-known but not the most famous place in Wanluan. The most famous is another restaurant, Haihong Hotel (an old establishment that gained fame after being visited by President Chiang Ching-kuo), so the crowd at this restaurant tends to block the little bustling area of Wanluan. Despite Haihong Hotel having three separate establishments and four parking lots, it still gets very crowded. During holidays, more people tend to visit, especially during the Lunar New Year reunion and travel times. Whether or not you eat at Haihong Hotel, you need to mentally prepare for the crowds when you enter the bustling area of Wanluan during holidays or tourist seasons.
The Xiong Family Wanluan Pork Knuckles we dined at was highly recommended by a relative who is a food enthusiast.
👉 Reasons for the relative's recommendation include:
- They believe this restaurant's pork knuckles taste better (personal preference).
- The environment is clean, and the food is served quickly.
- The staff is friendly and polite.
While making the recommendation, my relative praised the staff's friendliness, the cleanliness, and the speed of service, and I experienced firsthand why it received such high recommendations.
🛎️ About the service:
Located in the rural Wanluan, most of the staff are middle-aged to elderly, and you rarely see young people, or if you do, they might be foreign brides.
You can see that even though the staff are older, they are not slow; they don't rush but carry out their tasks methodically. It may seem slower, but they actually complete tasks quickly. They kept track of the number of diners and served the exact amount of dipping sauce for the pork knuckles. Although they serve each dish one at a time, soon all the empty spaces on the table were filled.
In a busy and noisy environment, it's common for staff to become impatient due to fatigue. We dined on the last day of the Lunar New Year, even at a time close to the end of lunch, yet the staff still greeted us with smiles, asking for understanding about their fatigue, while maintaining a good speed of service. They would double-check orders to avoid mistakes, smiling to welcome guests and seeing them off with a smile. It’s no wonder my relative highlighted their service! The seemingly simple rural eatery offers a warmth and quality service that many urban restaurants cannot match, with a perfect touch of enthusiasm.
I once doubted: Is it because this restaurant isn't that famous, leading to less crowd and the staff having the time and energy to be so pleasant? But upon understanding, I found out that this restaurant has its own small fame! From what I gathered, this restaurant assisted with the filming of the drama "Niangjia" (Mother's House) and even opened another branch in Checheng specifically for this collaboration! That branch is the filming location! Indeed, the drama has already finished filming, and the restaurant has continued to operate until now!
🪑 About the environment:
This is not what you would call an elegant restaurant. The front counter is just a preparation area, with round tables inside, and there are seats on the second floor as well. The entire place has an old-fashioned style, with tiled floors. Each round table is covered with pink plastic cloth, reminiscent of traditional banquet setups.
At least when you walk past, the floor doesn’t feel sticky or damp, and the indoor air doesn't have a musty or stale smell. To maintain walkway space, the edges of the round tables are smaller, making it easy to run into others and block paths.
I noticed that some reviews on Google Maps expressed discontent about "flies in the restaurant." During our meal, we only encountered one fly, which appeared towards the end of our meal (when most of us were already full and chatting while drinking tea and soup), so it didn’t affect our dining experience significantly.
As for the dishes, I’ll leave that to the photos to explain!
🅿️ About parking:
There are many parking lots nearby, mostly belonging to Haihong Hotel. In the southern region, it's common to park along the roadside, in places marked with white lines and without red lines. If you see others parked, there’s usually no significant issue. 👌
However, one must be cautious of ditches! In rural areas, roads often lack guardrails, so if you inadvertently park too close to the edge, you might end up in a ditch, which would be a hassle!