Natural Tofu at Book Chang Dong
July 29th, 2006 | by Loretta |Happy early birthday, Dannyson!
To celebrate his 21st, we were chaffeured out to Flushing for some good eats on Kissena Boulevard. Just a few blocks from and IHOP, Book Chang Dong describes itself as a Natural Tofu Restaurant.
When you first walk in, the vestibule is filled with articles from the New York Times and Zagat’s Survey, commending the restaurant for its food.
Our reason for going here was the soon doo boo, a tofu dish served in a variety of ways. It’s like how curry can be served with different levels of heat and also different foods inside the curry itself (eggplant, chicken, seafood, etc.) Well, with soon doo boo, it’s like that, except that there’s soft tofu in a red, red soup each time.
Our menus were our placemats. Our placemats were our menu. The selections are not complicated, which I really liked. There’s a good variety of things that you could order, but not so many that you’d take forever trying to decide what to get. And also, it’s written in English, Korean, Chinese and Spanish. That’s pretty diesel.
Though the store front was a little narrow, the store itself is several meters deep. We were fortunate to come around noon on a Saturday, when it was rather empty. By one or so, it was pretty much a full house.
Dannyson was the only one at our table who knew what he was doing and ordered everything for our party of 8. The waitress was super sweet and realized he was ordering that much because we were celebrating his birthday, so she gave us complementary Cokes. 
The feasting began with little dishes of appetizers. There were pickled and spiced foods like hard tofu, cucumber and, of course, kimchi. (P.S. I really love kimchi. :D) There were also little dishes of bean sprouts and a sweetened potato, which I really enjoyed. These were served with dishes of soy sauce, flavored with sesame seeds and green onion.
Dining in authentic Asian restaurants usually means communal dining, or family-style dining. This means that some dishes don’t have to be ordered more than once, because it’s meant to serve many people already.
We started off with two types of pancakes: kimchi and seafood.
There are 8 slices for each pancake, which had the diameter of maybe 16-17″.
The kimchi one had a good kick to it, thanks to the extra spiciness. It went well with the batter that was used for the pancake.
Then, we tried the seafood pancake, which was also very good. It wasn’t spicy, giving us a chance to really taste the seafood. And while both of these were called pancakes, believe it, it’s not the flour mixture used to make that pancakes we would eat for breakfast. It’s a savory pancake with little leavening. Probably the only leavening in it are eggs.
To follow our appetizers, we had some really good bulgoogi. Bulgoogi is a very tender cut of beef, sliced thinly and it was cooked with onions. We also had two orders of LA kalbi, a type of short ribs, which were cut into ~1/4″ slices.
This beef was also tender as well. There were not chewy tendons or anything that we had to gnaw at, and it came off the bones cleanly. (Note the service button…that we couldn’t find any wires for under the table. 
)
We ate the yummy beef with rice. Korean rice is very different from the rice we have in my home. Like Japanese rice, it’s starchier, so it sticks together more and is easier to pick up with chopsticks with the bowl still on the table. Chinese rice tends to be a little more dry, and the grains usually remain as individual grains. While Chinese rice might stick together for easy eating, it doesn’t clump nearly as much as Korean or Japanese rice.
Oh, and I thought it was interesting that rice is served in metal bowls. I’m not sure why, because it’s really hot when the rice is hot. But in some ways, it’s more practical, since you never have to worry about the bowl cracking. Anyway, I really liked the rice, because when it cools, it’s chewy. I like chewy rice.
Finally, when things settled down, we ordered the soon doo boo! It was time to put our eating artillery to go use. When we first sat down, our placemats had the menu, a pair of chopsticks and a spoon. I thought this was worth showing, because hey, individually wrapped spoons post-cleaning are a pretty good idea.
Since Dorcas and I were pretty full from all the yummies on the table, we decided to split a bowl of soon doo boo. We ordered the special and wanted it spicy.
This was served in a cast iron bowl on top of a plate and was piping hot from the kitchen. The liquid had a thin consistency and pretty good clarity, not in terms of color (obviously, it was red, not clear) but in terms of what was in the liquid. But this did not last long as Dorcas explained to me that the eggs that they gave us, which were maybe 1.5″ from end to end, were supposed to be added to this.
Awesome, I thought, interactive dining!
I had the honor of cracking an egg on the table and adding it to our tofu bowl. Then Dorcas stirred with her spoon.
While most people at our table ate this by adding rice to the soup, Dorcas and I did the opposite and added the soup to our rice (we were sharing.) The taste was not heavy, and it really was spicy. :O Oh and when you let it cool down so it doesn’t scorch your tongue, you can really taste the intense flavor of the soup and how well the foods added to it go with it.
Before the eating was over, what better way to mark a 21st birthday than a bottle of Jinro and shot glasses?
Truly, this was a very remarkable dining experience for me, because most of everything I ate was new for me. And I really enjoyed it. It was my first meal at a Korean restaurant. Thanks so much for the great meal, Dannyson!
Book Chang Dong is located at 46-09 Kissena Boulevard in Flushing. Bring a big appetite.