I'm looking for a particular type of bean curd which I used to get from a Chinese restaurant a few years ago before it closed and I haven't been able to find it anywhere (The servers there didn't know what it was called either, we just called it spiraled bean curd).
It looked like it was made from thin slices of bean curd that were rolled into spirals then deep fried (the thin strips would get flaky and it had a golden brown look to it, but that might have been the sauce they used). I haven't been able to find any pictures of it online and some of the stores I've gone to don't seem to carry it
Best Answer
So... Based on our comments, I'm answering. I think what you're looking for is literally deep fried tofu skin or bean curd sheets. Tofu is literally the result of heating soy milk (made from beans) and curdling it with a chemical (called nigari in Japanese) or an acid and then pressing excess liquid out of the curd. And if that sounds like making a fresh cheese like paneer or cheater ricotta, that's because it is.
"Bean curd" is another word for tofu, but seems to have come to refer to the skin that forms on top of the soy milk as its heating preferentially. But as in my comment, it can also be called tofu skin. That skin is thin, but strong and flexible, and really versatile. It can be moistened and used like an egg roll skin, or stir-fried, or added to soup, or served as a dish in its own right with a sauce like you had, or fried like a pork rind and eaten like chips. It's quite crispy when fried, but quickly becomes chewy again in my experience if paired with a sauce or filling (or hey, I could be doing it wrong).
As for the spiral aesthetic, it's not an inherent feature, but the sheets are very malleable when damp, and could easily be rolled up and fried like that. It would allow more sheets to fit in the fryer at once.
Your restaurant could have bought pre-shaped rolls, but I'm guessing it would be cheaper to buy big sheets and shape them in-house.
As for the sauce, I can't help you, but there are actually a lot of recipes out there. It seems like fried/sauced bean curd might be a popular side dish at a lot of dim sum restaurants.