If you suffer from a common ailment of going to a restaurant and leaving still hungry, look no further than Koreatown 
in Manhattan. You aren’t allowed to leave if you’ve got a spec of space still in your belly, or if there’s a drop of food left on your plates. The menus are immense, but at the BCD Tofu House (17 West 32nd St.) there is a shining star—the Tofu Soup. There seems to be a theme brewing in this blog…exotic soup has affected my life for a second time. Just as with the soup dumplings from Joe’s Shanghai, maybe you’re not too sure what you’ll be ordering. I just went with the flow and hoped I liked what I ordered, namely the tofu soup with dumplings. I wondered how they felt entitled to charge $12 for a bowl of soup…until about five seconds passed from the moment I placed my order. One waiter swooped in with a large black wrought iron kettle of rice, one for each person, and other waiters carried the unlimited nibbles that followed free of charge: fried fish (whole), kimchee soup, a plate of kimchee, other plates of vegetables and fish and who knows what else. Luckily I had come armed to the restaurant with my Korean aficionado Andrew, and he promised that everything tasted better than it looked. I second that. Delicious!
So there I was stuffing my face with all these goodies, completely forgetting I had ordered the tofu soup with dumplings. Oh but the waiters didn’t forget; they plopped more food in front of me, and how tasty it was! As soon as you get it you crack a raw egg into the broth, and the heat cooks the egg! The tofu soup with dumplings is not to be missed (well, at least the tofu soup in general, you can pick the extra ingredients as you desire). I thought I was full from the appetizers, but I think my stomach knew it was in a Korean restaurant and that I wouldn’t be allowed to leave if my bowl was full of tofu soup. My dinner companions finished long before me, but I was a trooper and scraped my bowl clean. A tough chore, I know.
The meal ends with the waiters returning to the table and tending to your kettle of rice. They scoop out the browned bits of rice, put it in a bowl, and add water. It turns into a sort of tea that you’re supposed to drink—Andrew says it helps with your digestion, but I only had a few sips so I’m not sure how much it helped out. I think they could have a marketable product if they added honey or some sweetener to the rice + water “tea”.
I felt like the only way I could leave the restaurant was if some Oompa Loompas came and rolled me away, like they did to the girl who turned into a giant blueberry in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. No Oompa Loompas in sight, I hobbled to the subway home, content and stuffed.