I joined a tour of Oakland's Food Industry on September 7th hosted by Anthony Meadow, President of the Samuel Knight Chapter of the Society for Industrial Archaeology. We visited 8 Oakland food businesses in one day! The tour was led by Margot Prado, Senior Business Development Specialist for the City of Oakland, and Betty Marvin, of the Oakland Cultural Heritage Survey for the City of Oakland.
Our first stop was Hodo Soy Beanery in West Oakland where founder and tofu master, Minh Tsai welcomed us and told us about accompanying his grandpa to the local tofu shack in Vietnam as a child. Minh couldn't find the excellent quality tofu he craved here in the U.S., so he started making it himself. Hodo sold at farmers markets only at first, and now they are expanding to selling in local stores. They are expanding to the southern California and Pacific Northwest markets right now as an experiment. Since tofu doesn't have a long shelf life, Minh doesn't foresee expanding much farther than the West Coast.
Tofu Skin (yuba) forming on soy milk.
Folding the yuba for packaging.
Yuba is so tasty! Minh treated us to samples of many tofu varieties, all of which were delicious!
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