BCD Tofu House — Restaurant in Fort Lee

Where else would one go for hot stone pot soft tofu stew?

Because they sell BCD-branded ready-made stew packs in Asian supermarkets, this restaurant has become a bit of a household name. But I believe there's still no comparison to getting it fresh from the restaurant.

A few things make the dine-in experience super positive: The variety and plethora of banchan, or free side dishes. I've noticed some Korean restaurants now tend to withhold these until your entrees come, and some even add a surcharge to refills. Not here. They put down plates of pickled veggies, potato salad, and even a whole crispy fried fish (one per entree ordered) before you even place your order. When our large party asked for refills, it was given with nary a stink eye. You've got to love that.

The hot stone pots are actually hot. This sounds a little a little ridiculous to say, on par with saying a black cat is 'actually black', but I can't tell you what a pet peeve it is to be served stew in a cast pot or pan that quickly chills. Here, my stew actively bubbles for a minute or so after it's set down before me because the pot has been properly heated. Since they serve raw eggs to crack into a stew, the hot temperature also delivers some peace of mind that the egg will properly cook.

Sharp service. Because a soon tofu meal comes with hot stone pot rice, they'll serve you your rice and typically ask you if you want to make nurungji with the stuck on layer of rice. This is where they pour barley tea into the pot and leave it to make a porridge to enjoy at the end of the meal. Because of this, I've noticed how our servers tend to keep a close eye on the pace of our meal so that they can swoop in and serve the porridge when it looks like we're at last bites. Someone was always on hand for banchan or water refills, extra plates, napkins - you name it.

When I visited most recently, there was some construction in the upper parking lot that restricted the number of spots so I paid for street parking. But when I asked others in our party where they'd parked, they mentioned an attached underground lot that I'd completely not known about. So I'm here passing the good word onto you...

Right across the George Washington Bridge over to Fort Lee, NJ is where you can get good Korean food at affordable prices. We found this restaurant serving classic soft-tofu soup, and also some bibimbop and bulgogi dishes.

The inside was a good size, with a good amount of seating. They had a kids play room next to the dining room, and they had a monitor that shows the live feed of the room. So, you could leave your kids in there while you eat at the table peacefully, knowing (seeing) your kid is safe.

We both ordered Soon Tofu combo, and I ordered Spicy Pork Bulgogi Combo. The tofu soup had a choice of Assorted Seafood & Beef or Vegetable tofu soup. You can change the type of tofu soup with an additional cost if you want. I changed mine to just Beef tofu soup.

The soup bowl was not as big, but then again, having it with meat dish and rice would be more than enough. When ordering Soon tofu, you need to choose the level of spiciness. I went with “Mild” instead of “Medium.” The spiciness was good, not very spicy.

The Beef Soon Tofu was pretty good, it had a good amount of beef in it. We cracked open the raw egg that came with the appetizer and let it cook in the hot soup. The Spicy Pork Bulgogi was excellent, the marinate was simply delicious! Pretty good portion and it was the perfect comfort food.

My husband went with LA Gochujang Pork Combo. He change the tofu soup to be Seafood Soon Tofu. The broth had very distinctive seafood broth flavor to it, very different from their beef soon tofu. It was tasty and my husband enjoyed every bite of it.

LA Gochujang Pork is very similar to Spicy Pork Bulgogi. The main difference is that the meat used in the LA Gochujang Pork is more fatty than the bulgogi. The flavor itself was almost the same as the bulgogi.

The service was ok, they were efficient but not overly friendly. Maybe they are not too used to non-Korean customers? They were nice enough though. The food was great and I thought the price was good when you consider all the food that you are receiving. I would like to go back again to get some more of...

BCD used to be the best. Unfortunately, it’s not the same anymore. The nengmyun that used to come in icy broth is barely cold and tastes and looks like something that came out of a package. The seafood pancake that used to be crispy and hot on the hot stone was greasy and barely crispy. The kalbi was bloody and undercooked, and the soonduboo just did not have the same flavor. And the banchan was not like it used to be. They used to have the best kimchi but it tasted off and they didn’t have the usual odeng and cucumber salad. I’m leaving this review in the hopes that the owner/management will read this and turn back whatever changes they made. I recognize that things are tough and businesses have to make some cuts but it’s really unfortunate that it has raised prices and yet not keeping up with the quality. It’s apparent that they’ve lost a lot of customers because there was no wait during dinner time on a Saturday night. I’m thinking many loyal customers experienced what we experienced and are not returning because of how much the quality has gone down. I also noticed that they’re expanding aggressively and perhaps that’s impacting the attention they give to the individual restaurants. Either way, unless they go back to how it used to be, they’ll continue to lose customers. I won’t be going back any time soon. So disappointed because we used to...