Restaurant: Gombei
City: San Jose, CA

Yesterday, I had lunch at Gombei in San Jose Japantown. Gombei has four locations (Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and San Jose); the first store opened is at SJ Japantown. Gombei is well known for their curry dishes, and fried tofu dish.

Gombei named this dish as “fried tofu”. Gombei serves this dish using fresh tofu from San Jose Tofu Company, which is right next to Gombei.

Read on for more info about the dish, from Wikipedia.

Agedashi tofu (or agedashi dofu, 揚げ出し豆腐, often shortened to age tofu or age dofu) is a Japanese way to serve hot tofu. Silken (kinugoshi) firm tofu, cut into cubes, is lightly dusted with potato starch or cornstarch and then deep fried until golden brown. It is then served in a hot tentsuyu broth made of dashi, mirin, and shō-yu (Japanese soy sauce), and topped with finely chopped negi (a type of spring onion), grated daikon or katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes) are sprinkled on top.

Agedashi tofu is an old and well-known dish. It was included in a 1782 Japanese all-tofu cookbook entitled Tofu Hyakuchin (literally “One hundred Tofu”), along with other tofu dishes such as chilled tofu (hiyayakko) and simmered tofu (yudofu).