Soft tofu soup a specialty of Sun Tofu Soft tofu soup a specialty of Sun Tofu (May 27, 2005)

By Mandy Erickson

In Korea after the war, construction workers often had nowhere to go for lunch, explains Sun Tofu owner Daniel Choi. So food carts were brought to the work sites. But then the cooks, with only one burner in their carts, needed to devise a filling meal that could be cooked in a single pot.

The result was soft tofu soup, Choi said. With its silky tofu, meat, vegetables and broth, the dish soon became a staple around the country. "After that, people started learning how to make it better," he said.

Choi's restaurant specializes in soft tofu soup, a dish that straddles the border between soup and stew. It arrives at the table boiling in the clay pot it was cooked in. The diner cracks a raw egg into the pot and whisks it with chopsticks, adding richness to the broth without overcooking the egg; then stirs in rice, lending a chewiness.

Sun Tofu offers seven kinds of soft tofu soup -- meat, vegetable and combinations. The best was kimchee ($8.08 for lunch, $8.78 for dinner), which comes with a choice of pork or beef; I chose pork. The kimchee, preserved greens in this case, added a sharp, potent flavor to the mild tofu, and complemented the pork well. (In Korea, kimchee refers to any pickled vegetable, not just the spicy cabbage familiar to Americans.)

Seafood soft tofu soup ($9.01 lunch, $9.70 dinner) was also good, with its sweet, milky shrimp-flavored broth. It contained one large shrimp with its head still on, a clam, bits of slightly chewy squid, an oyster and a number of bay shrimp.

With so much tofu, the soup risks blandness. The kimchee version avoided that problem with its vinegary assertiveness, but the other soups required more spiciness. I requested medium spiciness for the combination soup ($9.01 lunch, $9.70 dinner) and found it wasn't enough. It came out a bit dull, even with the whole party -- shrimp, mussel and beef -- in the pot.

Besides the soft tofu soup, Sun Tofu offers two other choices: bibimbob, a bowl of rice with meat and vegetables on top; and bulgogi, grilled meat. There is also a tofu salad ($5.54 lunch, $6 dinner), but it wasn't available the day I ordered it.

The bibimbob ($6.93 lunch, $7.62 dinner) arrived in the same type of bowl as the soup, only it was smoking instead of boiling. Atop the rice, fanned around the edges of the bowl, was an array of finely cut beef; julienned carrots; strips of the white, slightly sweet bellflower roots; portobello mushrooms; zucchini and bean sprouts. In the middle was a single egg yolk, barely cooked, which is stirred into the mixture.

Choi describes bibimbob as "Korean pizza," as it's a selection of meat and vegetables atop a starch layer, but I found it to be more Korean en papillote, with its minimally seasoned veggies and meat, sealed with a heavy lid and cooked. The effect of both methods is similar: well-cooked vegetables that offer only their own essence as flavoring. The bibimbob was a simply prepared, but tasty dish; the only fault being that the rice was burnt on the bottom of the bowl.

If a diner finds the bibimbob lacking personality, there's a squeeze bottle of chili sauce on the table.

The soup and bibimbob feature little meat, so if you're hankering for a pile of protein, you can order bulgogi -- marinated and grilled pork, chicken or beef. My spicy pork bulgogi ($9.70 lunch, $10.39 dinner) was nothing but a plate of fiery hot, thinly sliced pork, well grilled so it was still moist. A bowl of tasty miso soup accompanied it, as did the bowl of rice that comes with everything but the bibimbob.

It's a bowl of rice, by the way, with a little personality: The mostly white rice contains a few grains of red rice and some beans and peas. Koreans add the extras for texture and protein.

Choi said he went with a simple menu partly because he found himself in a situation similar to that of the construction crew cooks. His location on El Camino in south Palo Alto had a limited kitchen, so his cooks couldn't efficiently concoct a wide variety of food.

But the Korean tradition of side dishes saves Sun Tofu from too much sameness. These dishes, called banchan, arrive on the table in little bowls soon after diners order. At lunch, there are five: pickled bean sprouts, cold rice noodles in sesame sauce with carrots and green onion, boiled seaweed with chili sauce, potatoes in a sweet thin soy sauce and cabbage kimchee. At dinner diners receive a sixth dish: slices of a rolled spinach omelet.

My favorite were the rice noodles, with their toothsome texture and slightly salty sesame flavor. But I also liked the bite of the seaweed, though its chili sauce was a bit too hot, calling for gulps of rice to tame the fire.

The service at Sun Tofu was mostly friendly and gracious: When I looked curiously at the raw egg on the table, for example, the server explained how to mix it into the soup. A few times, however, the server perfunctorily slapped dishes on the table without a word or a nod. The banchan and entrees arrive fairly quickly, transported to diners on stainless-steel carts.

Probably the biggest downside to Sun Tofu is its atmosphere, which is reminiscent of a school cafeteria. The main dining room is a square, white-painted box with a few small paintings, a fake ficus tree and a fridge for sodas. In the adjacent dining room, oddly, ceramic Christmas figures stand on the windowsill.

With its filling, healthful meals, Sun Tofu is a great place to grab an inexpensive lunch or dinner. But it's not a place to take a date -- in fact, there's no alcohol. Which is too bad, even for casual diners, as beer is the perfect complement to spicy tofu.
Sun Tofu 4127 El Camino Real Palo Alto 424-8805 Open for lunch Monday through Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Open for dinner seven days 5 to 9 p.m.
Checklist: Reservations - yes Credit Cards - yes Valet Parking - no Alcohol - no Takeout - yes Highchairs - yes Catering - no Outdoor seating - no Noise level - low Bathroom cleanliness - good

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