Mapo Tofu

This is my desert island, death row, one food for the rest of my life meal: mapo doufu. Legend has it that the dish, translated as “Pockmarked Mother's Bean Curd” (“ma” means a person with pockmarks, and “po” means old woman), was invented in Chengdu, China during the Qing Dynasty by an old woman with a face scarred from smallpox. Regardless of provenance, this dish is perfect: Jiggly soft tofu is combined with a touch of ground pork, chili broad bean paste, fermented black beans, chili oil, garlic, green onions, and the all-important Szechuan peppercorn, ingestion of which leads to a numbing, buzzing, tingling of the lips and palate (a sensation known in Chinese as “mala”). And you don’t even have to leave DC to have the region’s best version -- you just have to head to a Day’s Inn in deep Northeast DC.

Eater DC

Feb 8, 2017