Witness a dream come true – a 24 hour tofu house! Why can’t we have things like this in Philly? S took me to Koreatown, well, not exactly in Koreatown, but I think on the fringe… for some good old fashioned soondubu (korean tofu stew) at BCD Tofu House. And did we ever strap on the old feedback and gorge ourselves silly!

The place is run like a well-oiled machine… you order, and everything shows up, like clockwork. Everybody knows what the hell they’re doing here. You get plenty of banchan… the kimchi was a little weird, strangely sweet and fresh. I was surprised that everyone gets their own little grilled fish. This thing was so good…. so simple and perfect.

S got the bulgogi and tofu combo, so obviously, we got a bunch of bulgogi, which was a bit on the sweet side, but still good, and some delicious soondubu. You get to pick the spiciness of it, and we picked medium. The egg? You crack it and put it into your tofu.

I went with the spicy pickled crab and tofu combo. So yeah, it sounds crazy, but it’s raw crab that’s marinated with a spicy sauce. It might not sound appetizing, but my oh my, I love this stuff. I guess you kind of just need to grow up with it. And the soondubu? Yeah, this was good too. If you don’t get the combo, you can pick whatever kind of soondubu you want, but with the combo, it’s just the “premium tofu” which has a little bit of beef, shrimp, and clam, and of course, tons and tons of soft tofu!

Ok, so the best thing about this place? The rice comes in individual stone pots that are individually cooked. So it’s not like they have these industrial sized rice cookers and then they just scoop the rice into these cute little pots. No, it’s actually cooked in the pots over a big ass fire. I saw the video that they kept running, it’s for real!

What’s great is that the waitresses come around and scoop out the rice from the stone bowls and then put em into regular bowls for you so you can just eat. Then they fill the stone bowls with water so you can eat the burnt rice mixed with water later. Yes, this also probably sounds strange, but believe me, it’s one of those weird traditional Korean things, and I love this stuff!

Yeah, that bowl just has burnt rice with water in it. But you can’t imagine just how good this really is. And I could eat this as a meal.

S insisted that I take some pics of the aftermath. Put two little korean girls together, throw tons of food at them, and what happens? They eat it all up, and leave nothing but empty bowls and crab carcasses in their wake.

Seriously though, this soondubu was freakin delicious. And I ate it all up… If I lived near a place like this, I’d be here all the time!

Do you want the best Korean food in Philadelphia? Then look no further than Seo Ra Bol. It’s off 5th street in North Philly, and if you don’t believe me, then you can at least believe that Craig LaBan guy. He thinks so too. My mom took me here for another birthday dinner. Sweet.

Lots of banchan before your entree(s) arrive. Yummy. They give you quite the random variety.

Seo Ra Bol is one of these places that always gives you free food. We got these grilled mackeral, on the house. Good, too.

Instead of the usual staples like galbi or bibimbap, we went crazy and got something completely different – a korean version of hot pot. There’s 8 different varieties, and the menu says “for 2 persons cook at the table”. Ok, if this is for 2 people, then it’s for 2 very large people. Perhaps sumo wrestlers. Linebackers, maybe? Definitely not 2 fairly small korean ladies. In any case, we went with the golnak jungol. This came with galbi meat and octopus, along with a plethora of veggies and tofu. You can see just how big, tremendous, and colorful this is. And it comes in a nice and spicy sauce.

While it was cooking (the waitress cooks it for you), we decided that some noodles would be lovely to add to this. We asked, and they brought out a thing of fresh udon noodles to put in there. You see, Seo Ra Bol is this accommodating. Once it cooks up, it’s a deliciously bubbling cauldron of veggie, meat, seafood, and tofu. You can eat it with just the noodles that we got, or with rice. In any case, this was good.

Notice the aftermath. We put a good dent in it, but seriously, 2 more people could have eaten this with us and been plenty full. Another good thing about this place is that unlike most korean places which have crappy service, this place actually has decent, if not almost good service. The waitresses are super friendly and they are attentive. The food comes out fast, and it’s authentic and good. They also have kick ass lunch specials. Even though it’s in a seriously sketchy neighborhood, for once in awhile, it’s definitely worth hiking up to. Don’t worry, they have cameras on their parking lot.

Seo Ra Bol

5734 N. Old 2nd St

Philadelphia, PA

215-924-3355

L picked Kim’s Restaurant for the Sunday Night Dinner Club this month. And you know, well, it’s the best Korean BBQ in all of Philly (yes, I even think so), so I was totally stoked. So what if it’s in a dodgey neighborhood? Don’t worry, there’s security cameras in their parking lot, so it can’t be so bad! There were supposed to be 10 of us, so they had prepped two tables for us, and all the banchan was already laid out. Score. We started eating it right away. I do have to say, the quality of banchan is a pretty good sign of whether a Korean place is good or not, and really, their banchan is pretty damn good. Not everything is great, but their regular kimchi is great, and that’s a pretty good litmus test.

So yes, we came here to eat Korean BBQ. You cook it yourself, people. So don’t come here expecting to be pampered. And well, it is a Korean restaurant, so certainly, you know the service is going to suck. So just go in knowing this, and you’ll have a good time. There ended up being 7 of us, so we ended up getting 2 orders of the spicy kalbi and 1 order of the regular kalbi. Our waitress recommended that we get 4 in total, but I didn’t think we needed to do that. And in the end, we didn’t need to. So even though it says spicy kalbi, it really isn’t that spicy. And it’s definitely a bit different than the regular one, but trust me, it’s good in its own way, and not really spicy at all. Yes, it certainly looks spicy (it’s totally bright red), but it doesn’t taste that spicy at all. So get it. Trust me!

I ended up being the Korean food expert (haha) of the group, so I also ended up cooking the meat on my grill. We had two grills going. And you cook the meat over real wood coals. This is real Korean BBQ folks. And yes there is a fancy Korean BBQ stink air intake system over your table, but don’t even believe for a minute that you won’t have Korean BBQ stench reeking out of every pore of your body after this. You just will. There’s no getting around it.

In all my having to cook the meat glory, I totally forgot to take photos. Once I remembered, it was pretty much too late. That’s why there’s only this gross picture of the leftover bones from the spicy kalbi and L cooking the last few little bits of meat on the other grill. Oops, my bad. We did also order the haemul pajeon (seafood pancake) and the gochu pajeon (pepper pancake) as appetizers. As usual, the haemul pajeon rocked, and the gochu pajeon, well, it was good, but much spicier than expected!

The service…. well, it was actually particularly bad. Haha. We asked for refills on the banchan, and that took forever. And they didn’t give us everything that we wanted. We barely ever had any water on the table. Even when we kept asking. And we had to ask for rice like a half a dozen times. And when we finally got our rice, so much of the meat had already been eaten. But perhaps the charm of a Korean restaurant is that the bad service is part of the whole experience? No matter what though, the food is good, and you will leave full and happy and stinking like cooked meat.

Kim’s Restaurant
5955 N. Fifth St.
215-927-4550