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CommentsToo bland. Too rubbery. Too spongy. Too puzzling.
When the subject is tofu, these are often the adjectives. This soy product gets bashed and trashed, and nobody knows it better than Minh Tsai, who has spent five years convincing people that it doesn't have to be that way.
The 38-year-old Albany, California, resident makes and sells tofu to customers at 10 Bay Area farmers' markets and to top restaurants such as Greens, Coi and the Slanted Door. In mid-October, his company, Hodo Soy Beanery, opened a state-of-the-art factory in Oakland. He plans to begin public tours and tastings next month.
"We want to demystify and educate," said Tsai, sounding much like an evangelist.
When he was growing up in Vietnam, his grandfather would take him to the local tofu shack in the morning, where everything was freshly made. In 1980, Tsai escaped with his family - on a boat that ran into pirates - and spent six months at a Malaysian refugee camp. At age 11, he arrived in the Bay Area.
"I was surprised there wasn't quality tofu like what I was used to," Tsai said.
Tsai became an investment banker and management consultant but never put aside his quest for decent tofu. Finally he decided to make it himself. One day in 2004, he brought his creations to the farmers' market in Palo Alto. They sold out in two hours.
"People like eating this tofu because it actually tastes good," said Daniel Patterson, executive chef and owner of Coi in San Francisco. "That's not true of supermarket stuff."
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