By Carol Brock
NATURAL TOFU AND NOODLES
(Book Chang Dong)
(Book Chang Dong)
152-22 Northern Blvd., Flushing
961-2001 or 888-313-5454
Here's another dining adventure on your doorstep.
This time natural tofu and noodles at Book Chang Dong on Northern. The look is very long and slim, a restaurant that echoes the interior of a Korean home with timbers and walls of cement and stone. The tall backed chairs are elegant mahogany with tapestry seats. And the floor is blonde polished oak. There's a large open kitchen with a goodly number of chefs.
Your placemats have comics of cartoon characters talking about the food in Chinese and Japanese. Fifteen dishes are listed and that is the menu – plus the location of their four restaurants. Palisades Park in New Jersey was the first, then came Sunnyside on Queens Boulevard, next this Flushing locale and the newest in Philadelphia.
We were sitting close to the open kitchen to view every dish as it passed by. And everyone was having soft tofu, a stew served in black clay pots rushed to the table bubbling hot. It was a reddish stew with soft irregular bits of tofu and a few mushroom slices, and was positively delicious. I liked to add clumps of hot sticky rice.
There are all sorts of condiments on the table from the ever-popular kimchee, to pickles that tasted right out of a Delancey Street deli, sesame seed soy sauce, and other relishes plus ketchup and soy sauce and chili sauce. (It's a case of season to taste.) And there's an egg in shell on a tiny white plate. That is to be added to the bubbling tofu stew where it cooks to “soft boiled,”
As a first course there are complimentary cups of cold orange soup with cabbage and cucumber slices. Most refreshing. In ordering, be sure to try Number 8 or 9, the Korean pancakes. I think of them as crepes –
