Comment by mikekchar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikekchar | Hacker News Reader

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Let me put it this way... It's better in the same way that fresh home made bread is better than store bought bread. Now imagine that you live in a country (like Japan) where the average person thinks that a baguette is essentially a big hotdog bun that has been sitting on a shelf for 2 weeks. That's the equivalent of the tofu that you tend to buy in a supermarket in the US. It is possible to buy good store bought tofu, but usually it is unavailable unless you have a big Asian population nearby. Like bread in France, you really want to go to the tofu store in the morning for your tofu because day old tofu is tasteless and horrible (just like day old bread).

Whether or not you can actually make great tofu at home without a lot of practice is debatable, but at the very least the average person can make something that is worlds apart from the lifeless, bitter chunks of woe that the supermarket calls tofu. If you get a chance to go to a real tofu restaurant in Japan or China, you should leap at the chance. It's just like your first trip to a boulangerie in Paris -- mind blowing.

Not to take away from your point, but Japanese baked goods—especially breads and pastries—are extremely high quality, even if they’ve got a local spin that might turn off the hardcore purists.

By the way, I just bought a homemade kurogoma dofu today from the little shop in my neighborhood here in Kyoto. It’s not “real” tofu, but it’s mind-meltingly great!

Agreed. The bread from bakeries in Japan are the best I've had anywhere; they definitely have a "bread culture" of their own and take it very seriously, and it seemed like almost every bakery in Tokyo was producing bread of remarkable quality. On the other hand, the bread at supermarkets in Japan usually was just white sandwich bread and little else.

I think you missed the point of the grandparent comment. It referred specifically to what "the average person thinks [is] a baguette". I love Japanese baked goods, lots of super light fluffy bread, great pastries. But crusty, fresh baguette is not something I saw much in three years of living in Japan. Every supermarket had bread in a bag that was called バゲット and looked like baguette — but every one got the texture all wrong.

Just like there are places (Asian groceries, etc) to get good tofu in North America, I'm sure there are places to get good baguette in Japan. But the average person would think of what they can get in their local supermarket, which is decidedly not-good.

I like Japanese bread, but I've still yet to see a good baguette in 10 years of living here :-) I'm absolutely certain they exist in some of the big cities, but you have to know where to go. There is a bakery called Chambord that has a have decent baguette, but it drives me crazy because they refuse to bake them before about noon.

I did, in fact, just bring a friend to Paris for their first real baguette, so I got a kick out of your comment. As you say, bread is now spoiled for them. So is cheese. And croissants.

I don't know in Japan but in China I have never seen a "tofu restaurant".

Tofu, of which there are many types, is usually part of dishes and I doubt Chinese want to restrict themselves to tofu in a restaurant...

Super interesting. I've never been to China, but I just assumed there must be tofu restaurants. But I guess Buddhism isn't such a powerful force in the country any more. In Japan, there are definitely tofu restaurants, but you have to look for them. Kyoto is quite famous for tofu, but there is a chain of very good tofu restaurants from Fukuoka (the name of which escapes me for the moment). You will also get amazing tofu if you ever eat at a shoujin ryouri restaurant (Japanese Buddhist vegan cuisine -- usually served at temples, but you can find the odd restaurant that's not necessarily part of the temple).

In China every region has its own dishes so I think people would get tofu dishes based on that.

For example Mapo Tofu is a very famous tofu dish and is a Sichuan dish. So although you may be able to order it in most restaurants these days because it is so famous people would probably suggest you go to a good Sichuan restaurant if you were keen to taste a good version.

Conversely, in you find yourselves in a random restaurant the tofu dishes will probably depend on what cuisine that restaurant mostly serves.

True, but mapo tofu is mainly a meat dish.

Edit: as in, despite the name, tofu not really being the focus in terms of texture or flavour. The GP expressed skepticism as "tofu is usually part of dishes and I doubt Chinese want to restrict themselves to tofu in a restaurant"; I don't think mapo tofu is really an exception.

A tofu dish can have some meat in it.

Tofu is the main texture and main ingredient in Mapo Tofu. The flavour comes from the oil and chilli like in many Sichuan dishes.

American Mapo Dofu is meat heavy but the versions in Sichuan tend to have less than 2 ounces of meat per serving and it's used as a condiment, not a main attraction.

The chain is likely Ume no hana (https://www.translatetheweb.com/?ref=TAns&from=&to=en&a=http...).

I’ve eaten at a restaurant in Tokyo that my friend referred to as a “tofu restaurant“. It only served dishes that included tofu in some form. The first dish was a wooden box on a hotplate that the waiter poured a form of soymilk into. It turned into a soft warm tofu paste we could eat about 20 min later. The final dish was a type of cheese cake that was amazing. This was a long time ago and I am (obviously) not an expert on tofu, but it was a very memorable meal.

Edit: spelling

There are certainly tofu restaurants in Japan. In Kyoto, I ate at a hundreds-of-years-old restaurant that just serves nothing but tofu seasoned with various kinds of salt.

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