What Kate Ate: A funk like no other

Just a thirty minute train ride outside of the city will take you to a quaint and magical place, the Coney Island of Taipei if you will, Danshui. This board walk (minus the boards) along the riverbed north of Taipei is a carnival lovin fat kid’s heaven, choc full of deep fried everything and Asian carnies. Not to mention a million fair style games to play where you can literally pick out a baby turtle from a tank full of hundreds and take him home as a prize. Although the deep fried squid, fish balls and other random pieces of meat were amazing and the plate of 8 dumplings for 30NT ($1) were delish, one dish truly stole the show here and that was the one dish you can’t avoid in Taiwan, Stinky Tofu.

If you’ve never heard of stinky tofu, then you probably have no idea just how pungent and odorous this innocent bean curd can be. Stinky is not quite a strong enough adjective in my opinion to describe this dish. Walking around Taipei you will often get strong wafts of the sewer and rotten cheese at night. You may wonder to yourself, why does Taipei stink so much more around dinner time? Well this is because the cheesy rotten sewer leakage you are smelling is actually stinky tofu and people are selling it everywhere due to its overwhelming popularity for some ungodly reason. Having known this and smelled this horrific scent for over a week now, I had to take this opportunity in Danshui to finally see what all this fuss was about. I have heard that the locals say this dish, stinks like feet, but tastes like a dream, so I was curious and when an even mightier eating champion, Stephanie, bought a big stick of the pungent curd, I had to have a bite. After struggling to get close enough to it due to its funk, I finally took a huge bite and let the flavor sink in on my tongue before forcing myself to swallow what smelled and tasted like the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth. Upon swallowing, the first words out of my mouth were “oh my god,this tastes like someone’s taint” (for you PG 13ers out there that means basically it tasted like butthole). It was then followed by, “omg I need to eat something else immediately, I can feel the smell lingering in my mouth” or as Stephanie so aptly put it “I think my mouth smells like poop” (she said this after she ate the WHOLE thing!!). Mind you, I have absolutely no idea what someone’s butt tastes like, but if I did, I’m sure it would taste somewhere along the lines of what this tofu tasted like. I suppose another way to describe how it tastes if you haven’t gotten a clear picture yet, is it tastes like the crud you pull out from under your toenails after running a marathon in dirty socks. Taiwanese people love their stinky tofu though. To each their own I suppose. I may, just may, give it a second try somewhere down the line. I think all food deserves at least 2 tries before being given up on completely, even if it does taste like rotten cheese someone pooped on.