We noticed that the Jing Long Fang location was under renovation by a new restaurant a while ago. It turned out the new restaurant is House of Tofu Soup, a Korean restaurant.
House of Tofu Soup has been in business for 10 years at the North Road, Burnaby location. When we visited this Richmond location, it has just opened for 2 weeks.
Well, Arkensen and Nanzaro did not want to have Korean food. So, both of them went to Thai Son instead, which is just nearby. Gosh, my boys have grown up faster than I expected.
Parking in this small strip mall called Yi An Centre is not easy. There are several other restaurants here like So Hot So Pot, Spicy Stage Cafe, etc.
House of Tofu Soup is very spacious. The walls are decorated with their signature dishes from their menu.
Their menu is very nice, comes with colour photos of the dishes. The photos ease the ordering for people who are not familiar with Korean cuisines. You can click on the menu to view them larger.
I ordered their signature Tofu Soup. You get to choose the ingredients and the spiciness desired. I opted for the mix ingredients and hot for spiciness.
The Tofu Soup is served piping hot. You are to break the egg into the soup yourself, a little action makes it more interesting. The tofu soup comes with …
… steamed rice in a stoned bowl. The server will scoop the rice into a serving bowl for you.
After emptying the steamed rice leaving the crust, the server pour some tea into the bowl. The server told us to eat it at the end of our meal, as a palate cleanser.
My tofu soup has some cabbages and small pieces of meat, some seafood (only recalled prawns) and lots of tofu. I found that the head on prawns were rather small and mushy.
Korean cuisines always come with banchan as appetizer or side dish. This brings me to think that the reason why Korean restaurants are generally pricier because they have to incorporate the cost of the free banchan.
Other than the regular banchan like kimchee, pickled daikon, seaweed, etc, we were also given some Pumpkin Soup to try. The pumpkin soup is creamy and sweetish. I wished they had given us a bigger serving.
Among the banchan is the above Mashed Potatoes like item which is not common. It is so sweet that I thought it’s made with sweet potatoes.
Ben selected Kamja Tang from the special menu. It’s the priciest item on the menu, I think.
Kamja Tang is made with pork or beef bones. This one looks like pork neck bones. Not a lot of meat. Lots of digging to get the meat out. I find that this dish is overpriced. We can get pork neck bone from Chinese groceries stores for $1 a pound.
Kamja Tang comes with lots of big chunks of potatoes. Ben did not even finish the potatoes as he is kind of watching his weight. This is also served with steamed rice.
What are those sesame seed like stuff in the soup? It is quite common to see them in Korean soup. The soup of the Kamja Tang is spicy. Btw, the word tang means soup, just like Mandarin. Ben said that his soup and my soup tasted almost the same.
Something different about this restaurant is tea is served in an uncovered metal jug, unlike the more common plastic containers. The tea has roasted rice aroma.
We learned something from a neighbouring table customer. She folded the chopstick wrapper into a chopstick holder. Very creative and practical.
House of Tofu Soup accepts credit cards.
The above is their to go menu. You can click on it to have a larger view.
House of Tofu Soup is Korean owned as the owner/servers speak Korean. Business is definitely better than the previous tenant while we were there. Service is quite friendly but it does slow down when it gets busy.
Those look like mustard seeds in the bottom, most likely not though.
Hi Suanne,
Those seeds are perilla seeds, which is quite common in Korean Cooking – much like sesame seeds. Wikipedia provides a pretty decent explanation. It grows perilla leafs which is sort of like shiso leaf. (I love to wrap some meat with the perilla leaf, yum!) As for the kamja tang, kamja translates into potato, which explains the presence of potatoes. However, I also hear that kamja could also mean the meat between the bones, and that is the reason why it’s called kamja tang(soup).
I’ve personally never had kamja tang in the house of tofu so I can’t really comment on it but it shouldn’t taste anything like your tofu soup. Strange. I personally like the kamja tang from jangmo jib in robson.
Yes it is perilla seeds they are good for one health also. Korean are so into organic food more now.
Hi Suanne!
Timely post for this week. Could really use something hot, warm and spicy! Will have to try this the next time I’m in Richmond. I know the area since I drove past So Hot So Pot (the name sound peculiar so it makes for easy recognition). Keep up with the great posts! :o)
Looks like an interesting place to check out as I think really good Korean restaurants are hard to find in Vancouver (there are a few in downtown of course but not much outside of it besides PoCo). In general, would you recommend dining at House of Tofu