This Tofu Dish Was One Of Anthony Bourdain's Favorite Meals Abroad

Anthony Bourdain was perhaps the preeminent culinary traveler. Throughout his career, he traveled to countless countries, tasting some delicious local dishes and others he never wanted to try again. In Season 8, Episode 3 of his show "Parts Unknown," he found himself in the Sichuan province of China, where he had the pleasure of eating one of his very favorite dishes in the place of its origin.

Bourdain was by no means inclined toward plant-based diets, so it may come as a surprise that he counted mapo tofu as one of his favorite dishes, even calling it "the apex of Sichuan food." He was, in fact, famously against vegetarianism — though Bourdain did say that he could happily eat a vegetarian diet in India. Well aware of his previous public statements about vegetarianism and veganism, while digging in, he noted, "My absolute favorite, improbably enough, is a tofu dish." It may have helped that mapo tofu typically also has ground pork in it.

If you haven't had mapo tofu before, it is certainly a must-try dish. (Frankly, you should probably go ahead and run through this whole list of Anthony Bourdain's favorite dishes from "Parts Unknown" to look for gaps in your palate.) The dish consists of cubes of soft tofu and ground pork, often combined with ginger, garlic, and mushrooms in a sauce that is spicy and numbing (thanks to palate-vibrating Sichuan peppercorns) with a vibrant red color.

Mapo tofu dates back to 1862 in Chengdu, China — and its origin story is a bit unfortunate. The name of the dish, mapo tofu, actually translates to: "pock-faced old woman tofu." The name does not refer to the appearance of the dish, but rather to the woman who invented it. As the story goes, there was a restaurant in Chengdu run by a married couple. The wife, who had smallpox scars on her face, made a tofu dish unique and delicious enough to be named after her, so it was given her nickname, Mapo ("ma" meaning pockmarked, and "po" meaning older woman). The name stuck, and the dish itself had equal staying power. The original restaurant where it was invented, Chen Mapo Tofu, is actually still in operation in Chengdu to this day.

Should you wish to try this dish for yourself, thankfully there are many options. The excellence of Sichuan food is renowned throughout the world, making it one of the more widely available regional cuisines of China. You can probably find a pretty good rendition of mapo tofu from a local Chinese restaurant. If not, you can always make it yourself. Collect a few Sichuan pantry staples like Sichuan peppercorns or doubanjiang. Once you have those and a classic mapo tofu recipe, you'll be ready to try what Bourdain called "the apex of Sichuan food."