At a glance:
58 John. F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA
Price: $$ (and a half)
Stars (out of 5): 4
Korean food is so flavorful and savory it’s hard not to like it. I love everything from Kbbq to Korean street food. Kaju Tofu House is a Korean eatery tucked into a 2-story building in Harvard Square (they also serve sushi and Japanese shabu shabu). To compete with 2 Asian restaurants in the same building, it must be serving up some quality specials. In this case, its their tofu.
My friend and I shared a seafood pajeon, or seafood scallion pancake to start. But they brought everything on at once so I guess it really wasn’t an appetizer. Pajeon is a pancake with an egg and flour base (there must be some glutinous rice flour because the pancake isn’t dough-like) and a lot of green onions. The seafood added include squid, octopus, clam, and oysters. It’s normally served with a sweet sauce to complement the flavors of the pancake. This particular pajeon at Kaju was the most egg-based one I’ve ever had! The egg made it quite decadent and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Then I ordered a combo dish of bibimbap (rice, meat, and vegetables mixed in a bowl) and the house special tofu soup. I got the oyster and kimchee tofu soup, spicy. There was so. much. food.
First of all, Korean restaurants serve their dishes with a variety of important side dishes, or banchan. Don’t underestimate these small dishes. They are amazingly delicious, and carefully chosen to go well with your meal and rice. In the picture below, from left to right, our banchan include: chili sauce for the bibimbap, a raw egg (will get to that later), lightly pickled radishes, dried anchovies or eel flakes not sure (? they were so much better than any dried anchovies I’ve had), potato salad, daikon salad, egg pinwheels, cucumbers in garlic/chili sauce, and of course, kimchee.
Whenever I eat a full Korean meal, the banchan are probably one of my favorite things of the meal. Hehe. Now the bibimbap. Very very very satisfying. There were so many ingredients and vegetables that mixed into a flavor wonderland. We have here shittake mushrooms, broccoli, fried egg, seaweed, sesame seeds, bulgogi (marinated beef) slices, zucchini, sprouts, carrots, lettuce, cooked mustard greens, and scallions. Sure, there wasn’t much beef, but I wasn’t even disappointed, because after I added the rice (which was perfectly cooked jasmine rice by the way) and mixed everything together, the dish was held together in perfect harmony. I had a few bites and moved on to my tofu soup because I knew I wanted to savor this.
The tofu came in a steamy hot pot. I was supposed to crack the raw egg into the soup right away when it was served so the egg could be cooked in front of my eyes in the boiling soup. Alas, I forgot. Probably because I was so distracted by how delicious everything had been so far. 😦 Oh well. I thought I could handle spicy, but this dish was spicy to a whole new level. Surprisingly, I could still taste everything.
The tofu was soft and melted on my tongue. The oysters were delicious and cooked very well, and there were plenty of them. The soup was hot and tantalizing on my taste buds. Though I was kind of struggling with the spice, it was very addicting and I ate it with rice to dilute the spice a bit. Suggestion: if you are not sure, go for mild or medium. Oh, on a side note, service was kind of spotty. I was in dire need of some ice water and it took a while for my waitress to fill up my glass.
Kaju was yummy! Try what I tried and I hope you won’t be disappointed.
Eat on!
(Eats) By the Esplanade 