After I had posted about Mandoo Bar, lots of my friends had mentioned that they also loved BCD Tofu House, so I put it on the list of places to try the next time I was going to be in K-town. Since my mom was leaving from Penn Station on a Monday afternoon, grabbing something to eat in K-town was the perfect daytime lunch plan. BCD Tofu House is actually a pretty big chain in California with a few locations in Jersey and Washington state. As my friend Neel called it, "It's the Denny's of Korean food in Cali" - which I don't actually think was meant to be an insult.
My mom and I roll in around 11:30am on Monday and it was fairly empty but it definitely picked up by the time noon rolled around. As I've said before, a good sign of any good ethnic restaurant is when its customers are all ethnic and this place was no different. I don't think I saw any non-Koreans (except for us) the whole time I was there. They have a nice lunch menu to choose from - who doesn't love a good lunch special?!? They have all the classic kinds of Korean food available but what they specialize in is their tofu stew. After all, all their tofu is 100% organic and fresh. We started with the steam shumai ($9), my mom got the seafood tofu stew ($12) and I got the Neng Myun ($13).
What I love about Korean food is all the yummy small plates that they serve you before the main meal. Here they give you a whole excellent line up of kimchi, bean sprouts, cucumber, radish, anchovies, lotus root, and they also give you an entire fried fish to start with as well. I couldn't figure out what kind of fish it was but it was salted and fried on the outside so it almost didn't really matter what kind of fish it was but for the record it was some kind of mild white fish - although it did have small bones in it. The shumai were your typical steamed dumplings and a nice way to start the meal. Although I did think $9 for 5 small dumplings was a smidge overpriced. On to the main courses - honestly I didn't know what made me choose my dish because it had no tofu in it at all and was probably the mildest Korean food I've ever had in my life but it was something I had never heard of before, so I figured I'd try it. Plus it said it was seasonal, so nothing gets me more than knowing that something may not be there later on (food FOMO!). It was essentially a giant pot of ice cold vermicelli noodles (literally ice cold because it came on an ice bath of beef broth complete with ice cubes), 1 slice of beef and then a bunch of thinly sliced vegetables in it. It was different to say the least. While I didn't love it because it didn't have any of the heat or spice I normally associate with Korean food, I'm glad I tried something different. Meanwhile, I had a bite of my mom's tofu stew and that was what I should have gotten. It was boiling hot, spicy and the tofu was indeed delicious. Mix that stuff with white rice and it's heavenly. The only complaint I would have is that the picture on the menu made it look like it was chock full of seafood and shrimp but it was definitely more heavy on the tofu and there weren't any shrimp with heads on in our dish.
Overall, this is a very solid place in Korea town. The service was great and the place was a nice mix of traditional food and a slightly modern decor. This is a great place to go if you need to catch a bus/train at Penn Station. I would love to come back again and this time I will stick with a more classic tofu stew. Total bill: $44 for 2 with tip and tax
Photo Credit: Yelp
No comments:
Post a Comment