Where is the best place for Smelly Tofu. I know most night markets sell em, but I want a place that is especially good and especially smelly!
Anyone know of a true local restaurant in Taipei with Smelly Tofu?
Not in Taipei but just outside is a little town called Shenkeng that is famous for its stinky tofu. Kind of touristy but the tofu is good. You can find it by driving out of Taipei past the zoo for about 5 minutes.
There’s a good choudoufu place close to Lotus Hill in Xizhi. I get some several times a week there. Corner of Zhongxing Road and Mingfeng Street, on the sidewalk in front of the elementary school. They’re only there in the evening.
I also remember a place in Gongguan at the corner of Roosevelt Road and some lesser lane. I think there was a bookstore (Christian bookstore?) on that corner. Very close to the Roosevelt/Xinsheng intersection.
[quote=“sandman”]Not in Taipei but just outside is a little town called Shenkeng that is famous for its stinky tofu. Kind of touristy but the tofu is good. You can find it by driving out of Taipei past the zoo for about 5 minutes.[/quote]Does that town have some nice teahouses with lots of wood panelling, and a roundabout with an old tree in the middle? I think I was taken there once.
That’s the place. There some nice motorcycle routes if you continue on along that road, too.
I second what sandman says about Shenkeng… and BTW, that entire town is famous for all kinds of Dofu dishes, in addition to stinky dofu.
My favorite but only when the weather is cooler is the middle of three beerhouses located on Xinsheng S. Rd. just south of Xinyi. The three are just there on the west side across from the park. Go to the middle one, best to sit upstairs. The one I like comes in an aluminum foil package and has chili and cilantro and all of that thrown in. They cook it and then cut it open and you eat it that way. I do not particularly like deep fried stinky dofu since it smells but has no real flavor. I also dislike the almost cardboard like texture of deepfried dofu and am hardly thrilled with the sticky sweet sauces (akin to ketchup out of a packet) that are used to flavor it up.
The best place for it is down the loo. But isn’t that where they fish it out of in the first place?
For all Stinky-Tofu lovers, here a sad note from Hong Kong. In the past it was possible to get very good stinky tofu in the former colony … cross on the outside, soft inside.
Nowadays, it is almost impossible to find it: the ruling communists decided that its too stinky … and doesn’t fit the picture of “Asia’s World City”
Another reason why it is nicer on this side of the Taiwan Straits 
Anyway, in Taipei: There is one very nice small restaurant between MRT Zhishan Station (Danshui-Line) and Chung Shan N. Rd.
Good is also the on eat the night market Lin Shen North Road (Next to the Combat Zone)
Recently, I tried BBQ Stinky Tofu with a brown BBQ-souce: delicious! Can be found in Danshui, at the seafront.
wow
#1) I didn’t expect so many ppl to reply and with such detailed descriptions. Well at least in terms of eating you guys are pretty much locals man…
#2) Well, I don’t really really like stinky tofu, I used to though until that incident back in the states when my mom bought a pack from the Asian food store, cooked it, and I got diarrhea for a week, 13 times a day. My ass hurt like hell, and my breath reeked of choutofu for 2 weeks, LITERALLY. Remember the news last yr about the nasty tofu factories? I bet it came from one of those…
In that case, all the more reason to visit Shenkeng. They have lots of excellent tofu dishes, not just the stinky kind. One of my favourites is the big squares of tofu that look kind of like cushions that they cook in a rich red sauce in a giant wok at the entrance to the store.
The signature Shenkeng tofu has a kind of smoky taste that I haven’t found anywhere else (and it won’t give you the hershey’s, I guarantee!). And the main street is kind of old-fashioned and funky – wooden fronts and red-brick arches.
My place of course. But really should this be in a new forum titled “Lu Bian Tangs”. Come on now. Who eats chou do fu in a club or restaurant?
Chou
Bloody Hell! I’ve heard it all now. Sandman calling a Tofu dish, ‘signature’.
We feed our dogs better grub back home.
[quote=“Jonah”]Bloody Hell! I’ve heard it all now. Sandman calling a Tofu dish, ‘signature’.
We feed our dogs better grub back home.[/quote]
To each his own. Don’t eat it if you don’t like it.
Actually, “stinky beancurd” differs enormously in the variety of its stinkiness. At one extreme, there’s the toilet-stink variety that I don’t think I’d be able to stomach even if I were on the verge of starvation – the kind that, when you pass its aroma wafting into the street, makes you pause to check your shoe to see if you’ve stepped in some dog shit (I’ve done that several times, before realizing that it was the smell of stinky beancurd). At the other extreme is the stuff my wife ate in Bitan on Sunday. When it was delivered to our table, I could hardly believe it was stinky beancurd. It looked and smelt no different from any other beancurd, and even when I sniffed it from close range, I couldn’t detect even the slightest offensive smell. I wouldn’t have minded eating that, if only it hadn’t been served with kimchi, which tastes much too strong for my sensitive and finicky palate.
Omni, I hope you at least tried one of Athula’s rotis – oops, no, you’re a vegemitarian aren’t you.
I wonder if the beancurd place is the same one I used to go to (except I thought it had closed down). Their curd had some kind of fresh herbs blended into it which turned it a disgusting greyish-green colour when raw. However, it really tasted wonderful – just a little stinky but still very flavoursome. They served it in boat-shaped dishes. It’ll be good if they’ve reopened. They were a few doors down from Cosmed, next to the 7-11.
It wasn’t them. It was one of the restaurant-stalls in the shaded strip of tourist places looking down on the river and boats, to the left of the bridge. The choudoufu was served on ordinary plates, looked appetizingly like “normal” deep-fried beancurd, and didn’t have the slightest detectable stink. But my wife thought it was tasty enough, and business there looked to be pretty good.