Tofu's elegant turn

Imagine tofu. Not the bland sturdy cubes of the Birkenstock set, stir-fried with veggies. Picture instead a square pot of soy milk, cooking at the barest murmur. Eventually the milky surface will wrinkle and stiffen ever so slightly. It's at that point that you take your chopsticks and pick the tofu skin up like a fine gauze handkerchief that's -- oops -- fallen into a bucket of milk.

You can eat it from the bowl plain or with a splash of subtle shoyu sauce, some finely grated ginger and a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds.

"Tofu skin" doesn't begin to describe this ethereal delicacy from Kyoto. It's nothing like the rubbery surface that forms when milk boils or when chocolate pudding cools. The texture is wonderfully delicate, closer to the finest pasta.

It's called yuba, and at a new Beverly Hills restaurant, it stars in several kaiseki-style set menus. I've had yuba before, but I've never cooked it fresh, right at the table, as we're doing tonight. We take turns plucking the freshly made tofu skin from the soy milk, watching the pot so we don't miss the moment it's first ready. Every set menu includes a communal dish. This one comes with the third, Ka Cho Fu Getsu Zen, "Flowers, Birds, Wind, Moon."

The idea of an elegant tofu restaurant debuting in Beverly Hills is unusual, to say the least. And this is a large place -- 8,000 square feet. Could there possibly be that many tofu lovers out there? Umenohana's Japanese owners seem to think there might be. With more than 70 branches in Japan, Umenohana is a highly successful chain. But will the concept fly here? I think it could, precisely because it is such a beautiful -- and quiet -- restaurant.

Designed by H. Hendy & Associates, the place has a lovely serenity and flow. In front, spiky grasses are planted in pale sand. Water sheets down a glass divider. There's a large bar, and three separate dining rooms off a winding path lined with a lattice of fragrant inoki wood. In back is a tatami room. But the most arresting detail is the glassed-in yuba-making room; there you can watch cooks pluck the tofu skins from wooden vats of soy milk with bamboo rods and hang them up to dry.

I loved sitting in one of the booths, which enveloped six of us like a semiprivate room.

Before cooking our own yuba, we've already eaten it in a couple of other guises, including a spring roll of asparagus and crab leg rolled in it. We've had other kinds of tofu too, such as a fluffy tofu siumai dumpling that looks like a felted pompom. Inside the tender wrapping is a delicious chicken and shrimp stuffing shocked with ginger. It's fabulous with a dot of Japanese mustard.