Honestly, I only use plain extra firm silken tofu in pad thai. It browns easier and stays together better when scrambled in stir-fry than regular tofu. Also, it

Honestly, I only use plain extra firm silken tofu in pad thai. It browns easier and stays together better when scrambled in stir-fry than regular tofu. Also, it has a more palatable texture for Western eaters. Another thing is availability. Grocery hypermarts like Whole Foods are embarrassing monocultures that lack diversity. Hell, they don't even sell basic pita bread of any kind at their flagship store in downtown Austin. WF maybe a bad example because many shoppers are more often about conspicuous consumption rather than quality, diversity, or choice and it's run by a ruthless corporation that only cares about maximizing profitability per shelf area. While Trader Joe's (Aldi Nord) at least sells pita bread, they also don't carry the variety of Asian-store-like SKUs of different forms of tofu, seaweed, or sauces. Whether a particular city can sustain a particular ethnicity or regional grocer not served by mainstream and counterculture stores requires sufficient density of demand from recent migrants and adventurous foodies to keep it going. I don't think expecting TJ's or WF's to carry many types of tofu is itself reasonable if there's not enough demand or the store is particularly small (most TJ's are relatively small). Go to almost any mainstream grocery store in America, and you will find it difficult to find a simple international ingredient like canned tahani. Most American grocery stores are provincial and so expecting them to offer different forms of tofu is several steps away from their current reality. Here's to a hope there are more ethnic alternative stores like what Pier 1 imports was.