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.

Since I can’t get ramen at home, whenever I’m in a place where I can, I get it. Upon Shirley‘s recommendation, I went to Boom. It’s by the same people who run Blue C Sushi, which is a Seattle conveyor belt sushi place. There are a couple of Booms in the area and I visited the one in Bellevue, which is connected to a Blue C. The place is big and modern, with a bar, lounge, and dining area.
I decided to try the pork buns just for kicks. I had no idea if they’d be decent, and to my surprise, I liked them! The buns themselves were warm and soft and fresh. The pork was shredded and fatty, which made it a bit juicy. For veggie fillings there was lettuce, cabbage, cucumber, and cilantro. It was all served with a ginger cherry plum sauce. Really, these were pretty good!
I wanted some spice so I got the kimchi tofu, with braised pork, tofu, kimchi, raw egg, and green onion in a spicy miso broth. The broth, kimchi, and the noodles were all pretty good, but it was a bit weird. The pork was in big hunks. It made it hard to eat. They really should think about slicing it. I liked the tofu quite a bit. But cilantro in kimchi ramen? Do they not know how much old korean ladies tend to abhor cilantro? To mix cilantro and kimchi is a bit scandalous. It was still nice to eat ramen though. I already miss it. Service was meh. I ordered a drink but I never got it. Yep, the server just completely forgot about it. At least he didn’t charge me for it, that would have made me livid.

Since I was working in a real office for the week, I was able to go out for lunch, which I typically never do at home. I headed to Wasabi Bay with the girls.
The lunch deals here are crazy and cheap. The small plates all come with miso soup or salad. Here are the pork gyoza, which also had a little side salad. The spider roll. The rolls are a little smaller than the regular ones, but the prices are even teenier!Here’s the chicken karaage skewer. This was topped on some side salad too. I really liked the surprise greens and the slightly spicy dressing that came on it.
This agedashi tofu was good and huge. And it all ended up being like $6 a person. Seriously. They’re practically giving this food away, because it really would cost you more in raw ingredients if you wanted to make this on your own. If I worked in my proper corporate office, I could do this every day.