Episode 77: For the Love of Tofu ft. Fong On
Since 1933, the Chinatown specialty tofu shop Fong On has been run by three generations of the Eng family. Prior to coming back to the family business, Paul Eng embarked on a series of careers over the span of 25 years that led him to music, design, art direction, advertising and photography. Earlier this year, Paul rebooted the shop for both long-time customers as well as a younger generation.
Paul recalls working at the store after school and during summers growing up. At the time, he never thought he would take over the business. After Paul moved back to New York following a decade of living in Moscow, and seeing the original location close in 2017, he started warming up to the idea of reopening the store using the experience collected from past careers, and follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. Unlike his childhood, when he had the least say in business decisions as the youngest sibling, this time Paul is fully in charge. “I have a different vision than my parents did because obviously Chinatown has changed,” says Paul.
One of the things Paul did to make the business viable and to not spread himself too thin was to focus the product offerings. The menu at the new Fong On offers the staples: Tofu (firm and soft), soy milk, tofu pudding, rice cakes, herbal teas and grass jelly.
“I went back to basics and stripped it down to things we did the best. I’m not going to make the things I don’t miss.”
In his diligent research, Paul tried every box tofu he could get his hands on to ensure that what he was offering was a cut above the rest in terms of quality. It reinforced his need to keep producing this labor intensive product. “We still definitely do it better,” says Paul. He did this with the tofu pudding too. “I went everywhere in New York and saw what I would do differently,” says Paul.
The journey to re-open was not easy as all the old recipes and equipment became lost when the original location closed. Paul’s siblings and former workers remembered sections of the recipe, but never the reason why certain ingredients or measurements were used. “No one actually knew why, it just got passed down from one person to another person,” says Paul. He spent some quality time on Google and YouTube understanding the science and conducted countless experiments.
Paul walks us through the process of how he backwards engineered the tofu recipes, and the steps he now takes to produce his artisanal product. We chat about how the traditional Fong On brand caters to a new generation of tofu lovers and what future projects he may tackle next. While most of the family have retired from the business, they are still excited to see Paul revive the store. And Mom still worries about the smallest things, like ducking into the restroom of a cruise to call Paul about the paper bags. It’s a family business after all.
