For this week’s post I ate smelly tofu, which I know is a bit of a cop out, because last week I ate balut, which is also an Asian food. Like, am I just going to write about Asian food every time? The answer is no, but let’s face it: Asians eat a lot of gross things. It’s partly what makes their cuisine so awesome.
Smelly tofu is tofu that smells. It is a popular street food in Asia. It’s fermented and it reeks. You can smell it from afar. To eat this rancid-ass stuff, I went to the T&T Waterfront Night Market, which is an annual gathering of food vendors at the T&T Supermarket on Cherry Street. It’s a great event to visit, especially if you like to see creatures of all kinds impaled on sticks and then eaten, because there’s lots of that. And there’s lots of bad music, too.
I had never tried smelly tofu before, mostly due to laziness. But I knew right away, as soon as I saw the lineups, that it wouldn’t actually be gross. People wanted smelly tofu, and they wanted it bad.
There were at least three stalls at the Night Market that were selling it. The first one was set up right at the market’s entrance (an interesting location, considering the pervasive odour), and it was so busy that there was a man directing the lineup with a megaphone.
My companion and I lined up. When the megaphone man saw us, he kind of twinkled. I knew what he was thinking: “first-timers.” The megaphone man approached us.
“Have you tried smelly tofu before?” he asked into the megaphone.
Clearly, as white people, we hadn’t.
He proceeded to tell us what the deal was, through the megaphone of course. Point one: it smells worse than it tastes. Point two: smelly tofu is like blue cheese or yogurt — the smell comes from fermentation. Point three: there are several styles of smelly tofu, including Hong Kong-style and Taiwan-style. This stall, called Smelly ToFu Hong Kong Style, apparently served smelly tofu Hong Kong-style.
The smell was pretty gross right off the bat. The uncooked tofu had a distinct bouquet of maggoty garbage. As we waited in line, people kept checking in to make sure we were OK. “Don’t worry, it tastes better than it smells,” was a common point of advice.
One lady gave us skewer sticks with which to eat the tofu — not one or two, but a pile of like 20. Those nice people didn’t have to worry, though. As George Clinton would say, I wanted the funk, the whole funk and nothing but the funk.
The Hong Kong-style tofu, I have to say, was a bit of a letdown. After it was deep-fried, it lost much of its aroma, and it tasted like regular tofu, which means to say that it tasted like nothing. Puffy nothing, but nothing nonetheless. The sweet and spicy condiments were crucial.
Better was the Taiwanese-style tofu that we ate later at Mother Bear’s Smelly Tofu (pictured below). This stuff had a different kind of reek — it smelled less like garbage and more like manure, or really skunky weed, depending on the waft. This tofu came with some pickled cabbage and hot sauce, and it tasted deliciously pungent, like cheese or something. It was possibly the best item we tasted at the market that day.
Conclusion: smelly tofu is actually delicious, especially if it retains its funky notes after the frying process. It’s not really adventurous eating, but it feels like it.
Jon Sufrin is the editor of PostCity.com. For his column, Eating Gross Things, he eats things that are widely considered to be gross and writes about it. He has no scientific method to determine what “gross” means. The article is just meant to be fun, so relax. For more of his thoughts on stuff, gross and not, follow him on Twitter. If you would like to suggest a gross food item for him to try, email him at jonsufrin@postcity.com.