Nevertheless, they play just as essential a role in the community and are just as valuable a part of San Jose’s culinary landscape. But despite the delis’ omnipresence-it feels like no Vietnamese grocery store in San Jose is complete without a fresh tofu maker nearby-they rarely get the same level of mainstream recognition as other neighborhood institutions like pho restaurants and banh mi takeout joints. Vietnamese tofu delis now make up the majority of tofu businesses in San Jose. In the subsequent decades, Vietnamese Americans would create their own kind of tofu shop, one that sells bean curd alongside a wide variety of snacks and drinks in a deli-like format, and usher in a new tofu renaissance in the South Bay. In some cities, these developments spelled the end of the tofu shop-but in San Jose, they would live on in the hands of a new population that arrived in the city after 1975 in large numbers: Vietnamese immigrants. By then, the growth of tofu shops had slowed if not regressed they had become redundant after the invention of packaged tofu in Los Angeles in the ‘50s, which enabled the ingredient to be sold in supermarkets instead of specialty stores. The Japanese American community’s grip on tofu started loosening in the late 20th century as the population aged and shrunk relative to other Asian American groups. Today, the dominant style of tofu in San Jose is Vietnamese, with a half-dozen strip-mall tofu delicatessens like Thanh Son clustered in a small stretch of San Jose’s heavily Vietnamese East Side, with additional outposts spread out across the city. And at Vietnamese Thanh Son Tofu, it can be ordered tucked inside a banh mi. At Taiwanese Sogo Tofu, it is deep fried in “biandang” lunchbox-sized pieces. The tofu in the Bay’s U-bend covers a wide swath of traditions and cultures: At US SoyPresso, Japanese-style tofu pudding is topped with soy milk and sweet beans. By my count, San Jose is home to at least 10 outlets specializing in fresh tofu, catering to a dedicated clientele of workers looking for a hot snack, home cooks picking up tonight’s dinner and local restaurateurs stocking up on their supply. Megacities like Los Angeles or New York might eke out a technical numerical victory, but San Jose comes out on top when calculating tofu wealth on a per capita basis: With its population of a little over one million, the city still manages to sustain a diverse and lucrative soybean scene that can go toe to toe with any place in America. To put San Jose’s embarrassment of bean curd riches in perspective, San Francisco has only one dedicated tofu storefront to its name-Chinatown’s reliably inexpensive Wo Chong. Soy milk curds have been strained and pressed in the South Bay since the early 20th century, but it’s not San Jose’s long history with tofu that earns it the title: It’s the diversity, freshness and convenience of the tofu on offer throughout the area in restaurants, supermarkets and an uncommonly large number of dedicated tofu storefronts. 20–29.Īn Jose is America’s tofu capital, and nowhere else comes close. A new installment will post each weekday from Oct. KQED's San Jose: The Bay Area's Great Immigrant Food City is a series of stories exploring San Jose's wonderfully diverse immigrant food scene. Freshly fried tofu is one of the star attractions at Dong Phuong-one of San Jose's many Vietnamese tofu delis.
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