General American knowledge about tofu begins and ends with “barely understood meat substitute.” Thankfully, my mom took a lot of notes from my Chinese godmother, so I’ve been eating tofu most of my life in just about every way you can slice it — pun intended. But after attending the Northern California Soy and Tofu Festival this past weekend, I had no idea how versatile this little bean curd could be.
The festival is a fundraiser for the Nichi Bei Foundation, a nonprofit born from the proverbial ashes of the Nichi Bei Times, a bilingual daily paper that ceased operations in 2009. The paper’s closing was the loss of a major Japanese-American community pillar in the Bay Area. Kenji Taguma, the former vice president and English-edition editor for the NBT, along with a few fellow staff members, pulled together any and all resources they had, creating the Nichi Bei Foundation and its circulated biweekly publication of the same name.
“We felt it wasn’t time to die yet,” said Taguma. “So we set out to rebuild brick by brick in the spirit of the Issei — first-generation immigrants who came here with nothing…it was a movement, really.”
It’s our signature fundraiser, but it’s also part of our goals of community building and leadership development.
Establishing a nonprofit newspaper with no prior models and hardly any funding is about as hard as it sounds. But nearly 10 years later, the Nichi Bei Foundation continues to publish both its printed edition and on its website, in addition to producing a film series documenting the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans in the Bay Area.
Part of the fundraising for the Nichi Bei Foundation comes from the annual Northern California Soy and Tofu Festival, a one-day event that’s since outgrown its Peace Plaza origins and moved into the spacious Event Center at St. Mary’s Cathedral on Gough. There visitors can enjoy rooms devoted to all things soy and tofu, ranging from tastings to dessert competitions to live bands to product demonstrations.
“It’s our signature fundraiser, but it’s also part of our goals of community building and leadership development,” said Taguma, now the founding president of the Nichi Bei Foundation. Taguma says the goal is to bring people who are new to events and give them an experience so they can then move on to become organizers or board members.
While the 2018 the festival has already ended, its exponential growth means next year could be even better. Here are a few things you missed this year — and could look forward to for next year. Trust me—none of them is what you’re expecting.
1. The Competition Is Fierce
Easily one of the biggest draws to the entire festival, and a lasting piece of the Nichi Bei legacy, is the tofu-dessert competition. When it was still the Nichi Bei Times, the publication hosted a much smaller version of this competition as a stand-alone event. Now five judges taste four dishes and rate them on taste and presentation. This year, contestants chatted with emcee and Bay Area broadcaster Jana Katsuyama while the judges tried their dishes. Then each judge gave a few comments on what they liked — or didn’t. It was drama. It was tofu. It was the Food Network made local and real.
2. Japanese Jazz Fusion
You wanna know what an upright bass sounds like with a koto? Try the Murasaki Ensemble, which opened the day’s festivities on the main stage, framed by brightly colored lanterns and adorable anthropomorphized tofu mascots. Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto straight up rocked out on the koto, a traditional Japanese stringed instrument, and I want more.
3. Taste ALL the Things!
In this year’s festival, some of the leading names in the soy business demonstrated their latest and greatest — including the newest strawberry Soylent, which debuted mere days before the festival. Now, I’m a sample fiend, but when it comes to Soylent, I just can’t get Charlton Heston out of my head. So I skipped straight to the tofurkey, Viana snack “sausages,” citrus Kikkoman and fermented soybeans from Megumi Natto. The last of these earned me a once-over from the guy behind the booth as he warned me that it’s an “acquired taste,” and whoa, was he not wrong. But still, if I were to be offered fermented soybeans on a chip again in the future, I’d definitely take the opportunity.
4. Okay, But Even More Dessert, Please
High up on my to-try list was the miso caramel ice cream bar from Ooh De Lolli, because how do you put miso in ice cream? Whatever magic they worked, it made for a sweet, creamy, fragrant treat that I’m not sure can be replicated elsewhere. Across the room, Jade Chocolates displayed and sold some of the most beautiful truffles I’ve ever seen — some of which included miso as well.
5. Tofu Mascots
Y’ALL.
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