Instead of heading into the city, I decided to spend my last night in the burbs and ended up busting a gut at BCD Tofu House in Edmonds. I’ve been to one before in LA, so I knew what to expect. I ordered a spicy pickled crab & tofu combo. I got a whole bunch of banchan, including this entire grilled fish. It’s impossible to go hungry here. This banchan wasn’t particularly amazing, but it was just fine.
Here’s the crab. Typically, it’s one of my favorite korean dishes of all time. Here, it was only ok. The crab didn’t taste that fresh and the flavor was only so-so. But heck, there was tons of it! And most of the crab was claws, which a lot of you probably prefer.
Here’s my little steaming cauldron of soondubu! Yum! I think there was beef and seafood in this. It just seemed to have a little bit of everything. It was also ok.
They have the “purple” rice here, which is cool. The rice comes out in its own little cauldron, but when the server comes out, she transports the rice into a metal bowl and then leaves the leftovers in the cauldron with you. Then she fills the cauldron with hot water.
Then you can mix up the water with the leftover rice and also eat that. It’s actually probably my favorite part of such a soondubu meal, even though it’s probably the most boring! This place is pretty small, and there’s only one server working in the whole place. Despite this, the service was quite fine and the food came out quickly.

I was in Seattle for work so on one night, we went out for a big team dinner at Grazie Ristorante. My office is in the burbs so we stuck to the Burbs. This place is right next to a Taco Bell. It was funny because that was the night the news about the Taco Bell meat broke out. This is a big italian joint, and they have a few restaurants in the Seattle suburbs. Here’s the calamari fritti with lemon garlic aioli and basil pesto aioli. Good stuff!
This is the roasted prosciutto with fresh mozzarella, roasted peppers, and grilled polenta. This was good but it was a bit skimpy on the prosciutto. It was mostly everything else, as you can see.
Here’s C’s tortellini gorgonzola. Not only is it filled with gorgonzola, it is also in a gorgonzola sauce with basil pesto and pine nuts. He also added chicken breast.
Here’s E’s filetto gorgonzola – beef tenderloin medallions pan-seared and finished with a balsamic gorgonzola cream sauce, frizzled onions, and served with garlic mashed potatoes. These garlic mashed potatoes were excellent! I made sure to help myself to some.
Here’s my crab and shrimp cannelloni. It is shrimp, crab, mushrooms, and ricotta wrapped in pasta, draped with béchamel, marinara, and dungeness crab. It looks like absolute slop, but it tasted just fine. We had a big table, and our server handled us pretty well. We were a rowdy bunch! We didn’t have to wait forever for our food to come out and there was plenty of food and libations to go around!

Due to my giant flight delay, I only had one chance to actually eat in Albany. So on my second night there, I headed downtown to DP. This is actually in the Hampton Inn. That might make you think twice about eating here, but please, do not let that stop you. This place is good in my book. I dined at the bar and it happened to be happy hour. This is an impressive bar. The bartenders here definitely know their stuff. And it looks like they’ve won a bunch of local awards, which is quite deserved.
I had this cucumber martini which totally kicked my lame ass. It was super duper strong and whew, did this thing pack a punch. But it seemed healthy to me because I could taste cucumbers. That’s healthy, right?
Instead of bread and butter, DP does it right. They serve sourdough pretzel ball rolls with homemade whole grain mustard. First off, how cute are these things? And second off, they’re freakin delicious and warm! Please, someone tell me how to make these!
I got the soup of the day which was a potato and leek soup. This is one of my favorite flavors of soup, ever, and they definitely do it right here. It also had bacon in it. How can you go wrong with that?
The lobster ravioli. These kind of look a mess, but they tasted just fine. I actually found it cool that it was black pasta.
These were the pork dumplings, served in a chinese to-go box. Meh, on that presentation choice. There were two dipping sauces, the first brown one was just kind of gross, and the second one was a sweet chili sauce type which I greatly preferred. The dumplings themselves were just meh too.
The banana bread bread pudding! Yes folks, bread pudding made from banana bread. It was super good. If you like banana, I highly recommend it! The two bartenders that waited on me were awesome. They were friendly and helpful and gave me recommendations and were quite attentive. They also kept calling me young lady, which was hilarious. If I’m ever back, I’m going to jump in and try some entrees!