I (almost) ate the stinky tofu

Thursday night is Night Market night in Longtan.

The name is pretty self-explanatory. Local merchants come and line the sides of a particular street with their wares, always including a lot of exotic food - exotic for the North Americans in town, anyway. And it wouldn't be a legitimate Taiwanese food fest without stinky tofu.

Stinky tofu is just that: it's tofu, it's served up hot and fresh when you order it, and it smells like a horse barn. I'm told it tastes better than it smells, and a few of my students rave about it. But only a few. I even know one teacher who tried some by accident and said it wasn't bad, but I know another teacher who tried some on purpose and thought the taste lived up to the name.

Naturally, the conundrum arises: should I eat it? I mean, no matter how disgusting it might turn out to be, it would be over quickly and I could say I had tried it. You might think I'd have outgrown such things by now. I mean, after my Rare Montana Treasure prevailed upon me to try Rocky Mountain oysters when we were in Wyoming last summer and I discovered I really liked them, I thought I had outgrown being squeamish about food. But the thing about stinky tofu is that I'm not repelled in any way by what it is, only by what it smells like.

Once again, that smell greeted us periodically at the night market last night. I've had a couple of odd conversations with my colleague Jim here and there about trying it just for the sake of trying it. "I've got no desire to, Dave," he always tells me. "If you do it you'll be my hero." As I wandered around the market with him and his wife (also a fellow teacher) last night, the unmistakeable smell reared its ugly essence now and again. Although I wasn't especially hungry, Jim and I ended up discussing this pressing issue once again.

"I don't see the appeal, Dave."
"Me neither. But somebody must like it. Some of my kids say they do."
"I don't think so. I think it's all a ploy to get tourists to eat something gross."
"But they eat it."
"True. Don't know why."

I do wonder how many locals really do eat the stuff - there certainly is a market for it, but you don't often see people lining up at the smelly stands. Last night, I opted not to be the first to change that. It's kind of fun to think about being able to say you'd done something that repellant - in a junior-high kind of way, anyhow - but it's something else again when you're actually faced with that smell.

So I decided I was a bit too old to be thinking of eating something I didn't find at all appetizing just for the gross-out factor. Instead, I went for my beloved barbecued squid. Ugly, but tasty and not at all smelly.