Shanghai's smelliest stinky tofu

In any other part of the world, a whiff of stinky tofu's distinctive aroma would cause you to look down at the treads of your shoe and wonder how you missed (or rather, didn't miss) the gifts of a local four-legged furry friend. 

Not so in Shanghai.

Here, we brag that our stinky tofu is the better than Beijing's, Taiwan's or Hong Kong's, like New York and Chicago battle over pizza.

Many Shanghainese genuinely love stinky tofu, the more malodorous the better, and they'll even trudge out in their pajamas to grab a batch for the dinner table. 

The stinkiest of the stinky

Out of all the stinky tofu in Shanghai, none are more nasally offensive than Hao You's steamed, homemade stinky tofu with fermented amaranth stalks (RMB 45).

Yet people rave about it.

What tofu looks like after it has been fermented for a week. Dig in. Think of it as a new kind of blue cheese.

A diner at the table behind us, Xu Xianhai, says the tofu is the reason he comes to this restaurant. “It's hard to find steamed stinky tofu in Shanghai and this place makes a great one,” he says. 

Hao You specializes in nong jia cai (农家菜), the nostalgic country fare of Shanghai and nearby Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, so the restaurant actually has a number of variations of the stinky tofu Shanghairen seen on the street. 

Although tables of people here sit and devour stinky tofu -- the most popular kind is a fried stinky tofu with fried mantou -- Xu is right, the rendition of stinky tofu Hao You is known for, steamed tofu, is far better than the ubiquitous fried variety.

Steaming preserves the texture and pungency of the tofu, bringing it all to another level.

Then, Hao You's staff add garlic, soy sauce and the ferocious but little Tien Sin chili that make it impossible to hold your breath without coughing during your confrontation with the zombie-fied tofu.

The making of stinky tofu

According to a waitress surnamed Wang, Hao You brines its tofu for weeks using a secret recipe from the Shanghainese owner. 

We might not know the recipe, but we know that it works.

The half-inch slices of tofu come out just like bite-sized photo frames: they are black and blue except for just a small rectangle of the original white color on the side that faced up during the fermentation process, covered in a sheen of red oil. 

The smell is atrocious, the taste is delicious.

The finishing touch is to add more stink: there are segments of fermented and salted amaranth stalk (霉苋菜梗).

At our table, a fellow diner, Yao Yizhong shows us how to eat this salted, fermented stuff by sucking the veggie pulp out of the stalks, a process that ends with spitting out the fibrous outer wall. 

We even learn some trivia: “Amaranth stalks are inedible when they are fresh, but a crafty person salted them, and as they rotted, you could suck the juice out of them," says Yao.

"A lot of poor families eat them. The fermented amaranth is extremely salty, so we'd have one piece about this long,” Yao says, widening his thumb and index finger to two inches, “to flavor an entire bowl of porridge.”

The pairing of stinky tofu and amaranth originates from Shaoxing.

The best way to tackle this is with beer, preferably alone, so no one will see you cry. Now dig in. We found the outside numbed our taste buds like blue cheese, but with spicy chilis. Inside, it's the texture of steamed egg -- soft and slightly juicy and definitely not the malicious taste your nose expects.

This truly stinky tofu might stink to high hell, but it just might grow on you -- and hey, at least it's better than natto. 

getting there

Hao You (好友汇土菜馆)
2/F, 657 Dingxi Lu near Fahuazhen Lu (above the Tesco Express)
定西路657号2-3楼 近法华镇路
tel +86 21 5178 6617