Rest assured i am not going to touch on the "repulsive" smelly tofu today although i seriously could not understand why some of you could be so disgusted with this delicious snack! The aforementioned sentence came from a man who doesn't dare to eat innards and frog legs.
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Anyway, the first thing i noticed on my visit to Shengkeng (renowned locally for tofu) was this queue of roughly ten persons outside a shop right at the main entrance commonly known as beneath the big tree.
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I was intrigued but the tummy was not really that hungry. It was a hundred minutes later that the brain (famished stomach was sending signals) decided to check out what the big fuss was it all about. As you could see from the photograph, there was still a line of people waiting for their food!
With all due respects, the tofu i skewers didn't appear to be very appetising; huge pieces of toasted tofu that would derail my restricted carbohydrate diet plan and the smell wasn't exactly that enticing.
No matter what, i had queued for close to twenty minutes and shall persevere! For NT35 (roughly S$1.50), you can choose to have one skewer of toasted tofu either tucked in the middle with coriander leaves, pickled vegetables (similar to kimchi), sprinkled with peanut powder or a combination.
I went for the classic; a combination of all three which was what most people ahead of me were ordering. Had a chat with the lady in charge; they started operation in 1988 and from the menu, i deduced that the tofu was deep-fried before it was toasted with a type of special sauce.
My verdict?
The surprisingly soft tofu was indeed delicious; the sauce was similar to the savoury meat sauce my mom used to get from a can and was irresistible when combined with the delightful crunch of pickled vegetables that wasn't as spicy as its Korean counterpart, peppered with the refreshing minty taste of coriander leaves that ended on a final trail of nuttiness!
Yum yum!
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Location
Near to the entrance of Shenkeng Old Street,
New Taipei City, Taiwan
Map
As above.
Additional Information
The shop does offer smelly tofu but only in their raw, uncooked form. I was in fact quite tempted to buy a few pieces back to Singapore but my mom was terribly averse to the smell and i have to respect the person who cooks for my meals.
How to cook is not a problem as the shop provides free instruction in the form of an information sheet for the benefit of smelly tofu lovers like myself.