No fu like a tofu

Last year, a survey round that nearly 40% of all Americans are “pursuing a more plant-based diet.”

I suppose you could say that I’m one of them. While I more often than not order meat or fish when I’m out to eat, I’m probably 75% vegetarian in-house. Sure, in the last couple of weeks I’ve made myself a BLT, and sesame chicken for a picnic on Spectacle Island I went on with a couple of friends. (Highly recommended, by the way, both the chicken – one of my standbys – and a visit to Spectacle. Among other wonderful things, there were wild blackberry bushes all over the place, with a lot of ripe blackberries on them. Yum.) Meanwhile, I just ate a tuna sandwich. But mostly what I’m eating chez moi is meatless.

It’s also tofu-less.

Maybe tofu’s improved over the years, but whenever I’ve had it, no matter how gussied up it is, I’ve found it bland, the consistency weird. Protein? Make mine peanut butter. Or a handful of nuts or seeds. So Hodo can’t count on me to grow their business. I’ll be taking a pass on their “best-selling Thai curry nuggets.” Lucky for Hodo, they have plenty of fans:

On an average day, Hodo goes through 30,000 pounds of American soybeans to produce 40,000 pounds of organic soy-based products ranging from plain firm tofu to fully cooked, ready-to-eat meals of flavored tofu cubes. The products are sold across the country, from gourmet markets in San Francisco to health food stores in Brooklyn. Hodo is used by the salad chain Sweetgreen and the Michelin-starred State Bird Provisions in San Francisco. In a June Nielsen data report produced for Whole Foods Market Inc., Hodo was cited as one of the fastest-­growing companies in the plant-based protein category, which includes competitors such as Sweet Earth Foods, Wildwood, and Tofurky. Hodo’s current revenue is $15 million, with year-over-year sales growth of 35.9 percaent. (Source: Bloomberg)

All part of the “lifestyle ­statement as more consumers focus on the environmental impact and health risks of eating too much meat.”

Much of the attention is going to “engineered vegetarian and vegan products.” Ah, vegans. I could become a vegetarian with few regrets. But vegan? I like milk and honey in my tea. When nothing else comes to mind, dinner is an omelet – or, going lazier, scrambled eggs. And I am never in a billion years going to give up ice cream. (I’m with the late, great Anthony Bourdain on vegans: the vegetarians’ Hezbollah-like splinter-faction.)

Tofu is considered old-fashioned, tied to oh-wower tie-dyed set, eaten while waiting to depart the old commune in a VW bus with the peace sign on it, headed to a Grateful Dead concert. The tofu will of course, have been served on hand-thrown terracotta plates, resting on macramé placemats.

Hodo-founder Minh Tsai is looking to turn the image of tofu around. For starters, Tsai ain’t no hippie. He’s a Columbia MBA who left a career in finance to focus on the tofuing of America, pursuing the Holy Grail of tofu: organic product that actually tastes good. He started out producing small lots that he sold in a local farmers market, but quickly decided to scale up. They’re still scaling, bringing on new capacity that will nearly double Hodo’s daily poundage.

Soon they’ll be selling their products, including “regionally flavored tofu cubes including Moroccan spice and Mediterranean harissa”, at Whole Foods throughout the country.

I like Moroccan spice. I like harissa. And there’s a Whole just a hop, skip and a jump away. But what do you do with tofu cubes?

For starters, I guess, stop calling them tofu cubes. Tofu – see above – “has baggage.” Plant-based is the state of the art term. So Tsai is rebranding.

So if I have a change of heart and stomach w.r.t. to tofu by any other name, I’ll be looking for Hodo harissa-flavored plant-based cubes.

The question remains: what would I do with them?

Maybe someone else in the nearly 40 percent “pursuing plant-based” can clue me in.