Dai's House of Stinky Tofu has another name in Chinese -- House of Unique Stink. It may sound funny to foreigners who are loathe to try the unique dish, but after visiting Dai's, one may find that stinky tofu really doesn't taste as bad as it smells.
Almost every dish at Dai's is made using stinky tofu. There are the typical tofus; steamed, stir-fried, and grilled, but Dai's is the only place in the world, according to owner Wu Hsu Pi-ying (
Decades ago, stinky tofu was a military staple for soldiers patrolling China's borders. But as Taiwan's night-market culture developed, so did stronger, spicier and more diverse flavors of stinky tofu.
PHOTO: YU SEN-LUN
Unlike most night-market stinky tofu stands where the odor permeates the air, Dai's house is simply a clean, ordinary restaurant with a huge Crouching Tiger poster on the wall.
Film director Lee Ang (
The somewhat freaky cold stinky tofu (涼拌臭豆腐) is actually quite refreshing -- similar to, but milder than blue cheese. With its soft and dense texture, it's served with shredded scallions in a light soy sauce and is recommended as a starter.
The raw tofu adds a new line to Dai's 50-year-old menu and is, according to Wu, the healthiest way to try stinky tofu.
In some places, you really don't want to know how the tofu is made, said Wu. Long ago, some used rotting seafood to ferment the bean curd while others used chemicals. But Dai's products are all vegetarian, using amaranth, mustard leaf, bamboo shoots and more than 10 kinds of Chinese herbs to ferment the bean curd for six months, said Wu.
Pure vegetarianism has turned Dai's stinky tofu into something of an urban legend. Seven years ago, Tsinghua University's (
Fried stinky tofu is the least pungent and therefore more suitable for first-timers. The fried tofu of the house (招牌炸) is Dai's flagship dish and has extra-crispy skin and smooth tofu inside. Try mixing the four sauces into your own blend: soy sauce, garlic and radish pastes and chili sauce.
For solo visitors, the tofu fried noodles with spicy and sour sauce (
In the next few months tough decisions will need to be made by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and their pan-blue allies in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It will reveal just how real their alliance is with actual power at stake. Party founder Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) faced these tough questions, which we explored in part one of this series, “Ko Wen-je, the KMT’s prickly ally,” (Aug. 16, page 12). Ko was open to cooperation, but on his terms. He openly fretted about being “swallowed up” by the KMT, and was keenly aware of the experience of the People’s First Party
Aug. 25 to Aug. 31 Although Mr. Lin (林) had been married to his Japanese wife for a decade, their union was never legally recognized — and even their daughter was officially deemed illegitimate. During the first half of Japanese rule in Taiwan, only marriages between Japanese men and Taiwanese women were valid, unless the Taiwanese husband formally joined a Japanese household. In 1920, Lin took his frustrations directly to the Ministry of Home Affairs: “Since Japan took possession of Taiwan, we have obeyed the government’s directives and committed ourselves to breaking old Qing-era customs. Yet ... our marriages remain unrecognized,
Not long into Mistress Dispeller, a quietly jaw-dropping new documentary from director Elizabeth Lo, the film’s eponymous character lays out her thesis for ridding marriages of troublesome extra lovers. “When someone becomes a mistress,” she says, “it’s because they feel they don’t deserve complete love. She’s the one who needs our help the most.” Wang Zhenxi, a mistress dispeller based in north-central China’s Henan province, is one of a growing number of self-styled professionals who earn a living by intervening in people’s marriages — to “dispel” them of intruders. “I was looking for a love story set in China,” says Lo,
During the Metal Ages, prior to the arrival of the Dutch and Chinese, a great shift took place in indigenous material culture. Glass and agate beads, introduced after 400BC, completely replaced Taiwanese nephrite (jade) as the ornamental materials of choice, anthropologist Liu Jiun-Yu (劉俊昱) of the University of Washington wrote in a 2023 article. He added of the island’s modern indigenous peoples: “They are the descendants of prehistoric Formosans but have no nephrite-using cultures.” Moderns squint at that dynamic era of trade and cultural change through the mutually supporting lenses of later settler-colonialism and imperial power, which treated the indigenous as
RSS