Curtiss has a secret.

A dark, shameful, sealed-in-a-vault, guarded-by-laser-tripwires kind of secret.
A shame he’s carried through 15 years of creating Gastronauts dinners and eating untold animal organs: Bear in Brooklyn. Horse in the Slope. Live tentacles in Flushing.

But all this time, one dish has haunted him. Lurking in the shadows. Calling to him from the back of the menu…

Stinky Tofu.

Yes. The funky, fermented, famously polarizing tofu. Curtiss would rather eat a jellyfish-pork-intestine-licorice sandwich than face this particular Taiwanese titan. But the time has come.

This month we head to Taiwanese Gourmet in Elmhurst, where the air is thick with chili oil, duck tongues glisten with sesame, and yes—Curtiss’s tofu nemesis awaits.
There will be pig ears. Duck blood. Intestines in all directions. And somewhere between bite 3 and 7, there will be reckoning. Bring your courage. Bring your TUMS.

Come for the Duck Tongues, stay for Curtiss’s facial contortions.