Stinky Tofu

We finally did it. We tried the infamous stinky tofu that everyone has been talking about. This is our story:

On our first foray into old downtown Suzhou, we smelled a terrible, terrible smell. In China, it's easy to find unusual odors. It may be at the wet market, with it's mix of fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, fish, and animals waiting for slaughter. It may be the smell of stale tobacco in the taxi. It may be someone's tea-soaked breath. If you're really sensitive to this, don't come to China, but honestly, for me it is all part of the charm (okay, not the breath). This smell, however, was unlike anything I'd smelled before, kind of like a combination of excrement and something rotting, and I assumed it was the sewer gasses wafting up to the street.

The next time we went to downtown Suzhou we smelled the same thing, and Don and I remarked at how offensive this smell was. It wasn't until a few weeks later, again in downtown Suzhou, that one of the kids said, "Oh, that's the stinky tofu."


"That is NOT a food!" I was unconvinced, but we tracked down the source and there it was. I determined that I would have to try it, but, well, maybe I needed to work up to it.

Last week, on an outing with my mom, we stopped at an outdoor stand in a park for some snacks and there it was. I was feeling adventurous, and rather hungry, so Allyne, my mom and I went for it.


Here are the pictures:














This is the tofu marinating in liquid, possibly fermented milk, vegetables and/or meat.















Here, the woman at the food stand deep-fries the tofu in hot oil.
















Here it is! The sauce was spicy and a little sweet, and the tofu was crunchy on the outside, but soft in the middle. The tofu tasted like, well, like deep-fried tofu with a savory, meaty flavor. And only a hint of the flavor that made it smell so bad.

So, did we like it?

We had seconds.