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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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

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...).

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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