I decided to make good use of this gift of time: I searched out a restaurant that was featured on Bizarre Foods. It was one of the few places that was able to defeat the sturdy taste buds and cast-iron stomach of bizarre food eater Andrew Zimmern. Its name is Dai's House of Unique Stink! (Chinese: 戴記獨臭之家)
As a stinky tofu lover, I had to take on the challenge.
After Googling for the location of the restaurant, I found a Taiwanese website that showed where it was. I hopped on the MRT, went to Taipei City Hall Station, and went in search of it. Turns out that the location was wrong. I asked at a local shop, and the woman pointed me down an alley, saying, "If I'm not mistaken, you should see it when you reach the end of the alley." Sure enough, I saw the restaurant, looking exactly as it did on the TV show, at the other side of the street.
Inside it was sparsely decorated, rather plain-looking. This is always a good sign to me: it shows me that they put top priority on their food, rather than in the way the restaurant looks. Here and there on the walls are some pieces of calligraphy extolling the virtues of stink.
The moment of truth was at hand. I decided to test my mettle by sampling two dishes made with their home-fermented tofu. I decided to order the same dishes that Zimmern ordered: cold-stirred stinky tofu (涼拌臭豆腐) and stinky tofu hamburger with beef (漢堡臭豆腐).
Here's the first dish. Zimmern had 1000-year-old eggs on his, but this option didn't seem to be on the menu, so mine didn't have it. This was exceedingly pungent...very sharp in odor and flavor, like a poweful, aged French soft cheese...not runny like brie, but instead boasting a firm, creamy texture kind of like cream cheese. However, I enjoyed it! I don't know how Zimmern, a guy who eats brains, worms and testicles with relish, wouldn't be able to eat it.
Then came the hamburger. The buns of this hamburger were made of deep-fried stinky tofu. It was served with a side of pickled vegetables. Now I could forgive Zimmern for passing over the above if he had at least had the guts to try this one. This is quite mild. And delicious, I might add. Not much of the tofu stink at all...no more so than your average street-stall deep-fried tofu. Come on, Andrew...man up!! This is child's play!
As I left the place, I took a few business cards. I'll definitely recommend it to the gastronomic adventurer. Then, as I walked back to the MRT station, I noticed that I seemd to be enjoying a natural high...perhaps it was just my recent lack of sleep, or perhaps it was the joy of having tried something new, but perhaps there are some peculiar organic chemicals brewing in those fermentation vats upstairs...
