Kimchee Tofu House

We ordered the regular bimbimbap (not hot stone) but all the ingredients are cold. I expect at least warm or room temperature. Bento is ok. Soft tofu is good. Hoping more variation on the condiments (banchan). Service is good and friendly. Weekend can be very busy.

The ownership must indeed have changed, because dinner was high on delicious and perfection the other night. Everything ordered for dinner— quite good.
Ban chan included the yummiest grilled small fish. Picked through it like a bird.
Was quite surprised at the experience, for as Daniel C has stated, Koreana sort of mildly sucked as a Korean joints and now happiness has been restored! Great meal, lots of silence because eating was high priority!
Good job, cooks! Thumbs up

My favorite place!!! Ahhhhhhh! I love the peeps here so much! Great people and super attentive.
Pros–
Seafood scallion
Assorted sea food soup? Um hell yeah
Short ribs — yeauhhhhh man
Cons– freakin none.
None.
Tip well. These guys work late.

Good Korean food. Very reasonable prices. We have eaten here many times.
My girlfriend always gets the tofu soup with shrimp (whole, in shell, very small), a clam, beef, and a yellow croaker broiled fish on the side. The flavor is great and it’s served boiling hot.
I usually get one of the bento, either bulgogi or kalbi. The meat can be a little too salty and sweet.
I love the side dishes they serve, just like in other Korean restaurants. The sides make Korean food fun. Service is not overly friendly, but they are attentive. We always walk away full.

Second time here, was going to order the BBQ Special and the waitress suggest the dinner bento box. Ordered the spicy chicken and pork. The food came quickly and that might have been the problem. The Japchae noodle were old and parts were dried out. The staff replaced it and the second serving was fresh and decent. This made me weary of everything else though and it completely ruined the dinner. Tried a few pieces of the chicken which was cold and the pork had a weird smell. The kimchi was decent, about the only thing I really could eat. Definitely won’t be coming back.
Update: Food poison this morning. Just horrible.

The food here is pretty good, a bit on the pricey side but Korean food is usually expensive because you get banchan (side dishes) that are usually refillable. But Jesus, they’re so skimpy with the rice! The bowl is already tiny, and it was about half an inch below the brim! Come on guys really?!
Service is bleh, I had to ask for everything and none of them seem to smile.

Came on a rainy day for some filling food and this hit the spot. We don’t get Korean that often but I do wish we did more. The seafood scallion pancake was pretty good, nice seafood flavor and just a bit salty. My only complaint is that it was a lil bit doughy. The stone bowl bimbibap was fantastic, good flavor of the meat, the veggies and that nice crispy smoky rice on the bottom with just bit of char. My daughter did love the ramen but broth and noodles pretty much please her any time.
Prices were pretty good and pretty tasty, we will be back

We liked it. Bento was affordable, banchan was good, service was friendly and attentive, place was clean, including the bathroom. I’d say a winner!

Okay food. The ramen was ok, but I thought the korean barbecue was better.
Sometimes I crave Korean, and this one will do. It’s not nearly as good as the one I usually go to in Daly City, but I guess it does the job. The kimchi they serve has just the right punch, and the portions are pretty good for the price.
The service was pretty good. We were seated right away and our waiter was attentive. We were kind of in a hurry to get going on our errands that day, so it was nice that they got us in and out.

Love their lunch combo, especially the rib one.
One of those Korean restaurants that meet your expectation with reasonable price, delicious food, convenient location and friendly staff.

Not the best Korean place, but the side dishes were pretty tasty. I got the tofu soup in mild but that meant white meaning no spice at all. That really killed the dish.
This place is located in the 99 Ranch plaza. Parking can be a bit chaotic, but at least there is a parking lot.

OK, I am going to say it: I love this place! The food is mediocre, the ambiance mass-​produced. I once got deli potato salad and coleslaw for my small plates. Still, there is something that keeps bringing me back. Surrealism perhaps.
Look, I’m a bit of a food snob, especially regarding Asian fare. I’ve eaten many wonderful meals in the cities and countryside of South Korea, from the fanciest traditional restaurants to beer halls to fish bars to roadside stops. I’ve had excellent Korean food in the Bay Area, LA and NY. I know full well that Tofu House doesn’t play there.
It’s comfortably anonymous, airy, relaxing and always just crowded enough for people watching, but with plenty of space. What can I say? I’ll be back.
Note: The food at KTH continues to improve, and I am getting to the point where I can take Korean aficionados there with few apologies.

This place is extremely average. No, a little bit less than average. You’d think that for a Korean restaurant, they’d at least do bibimbap right. But for some reason, this place really did not know how to make a good mixture of rice, assorted vegetables, and pork.
I think the only good tasting thing here was the tea. I love Korean rice tea. But in terms of food, try another Korean restaurant and save your taste buds, please.

One more point against Alicia when it comes to mistakes made. To be fair, I though there were three and a half stars and not the actual two and a half this place has. We were once again looking for eats in Richmond while I was visiting my sister. She thought that this place was going to be legit because of its location being right in an Asian mall of sorts. Worst Korean I have ever had.
The menu seemed reasonable enough… then the food came much too fast. I mean so fast, you could tell that it must had been cooked well in advance and was just sitting there. My spicy chicken tasted like it had been cooked seven times and had been sitting for hours. It was smothered in the sauce, which really saved it, but it was dry and rubbery. It tasted of chemicals almost… It wasn’t good. My sister’s sauteed squid wasn’t much better with sauce, but somehow bland… Not sure how you pull that off… The first round of side dishes were alright. The fish cake was a bit mushy. The second round of sides were old and sad and tasted gross. It was as if they were trying to pass on the old stuff to the people who ask for seconds.
I will not return and feel that I probably got sick from the food. That can be the only explanation of what happened that night…

My wife and I were craving for some Korean. We were on 80 and we decided to give this a shot. It is conveniently located near the freeway; next to an Asian market. The ambience is not so bad. But the wait time and the food, total rip off. I ordered a bowl of chicken curry ramen for $ 10.95 (dinner price). I added $ 2 more for a bowl of kimchee fried rice. My wife ordered the sweet and spicy fried chicken. We thought that just like any Korean place, we will be served the sides. The chicken came out first. It was ok but not the best. We tried way better (in New York). They took so long that we finished the entire appetizer. When they serve my ramen there was nothing extraordinary. The noodles were top ramen like ($.35 kind) and the broth was super salty. It’s as if they bought a packet of curry sauce on the market next door and added it to the bowl. And u know what else, they didn’t serve us the traditional Korean sides. When we asked about it the server said, «it doesn’t come if you just order ramen.» Common. We paid for $ 30 meal when we could have bought and cooked everything for less than $ 10. The profit of margin for this place is ridiculously high and they obviously don’t care about customer satisfaction. Do yourselves a favor and don’t think about going on here.

I will never eat here again– the reason why I almost had food poisoning by eating their rice noodle appetizer. I was in the bathroom til the next day. There food is under seasoned all the time. Once they served me beef kalbi and it was raw and I had to send it back. To top the worse experience ever their charged me $ 35 for my meal. This place is over priced I can’t believe it!

The only reason it’s getting 3 stars is because the servers we’re very nice. The food was bland and really overpriced.

«Korean ramen soup, bento boxes and more». I have been here numerous times and always enjoy my experience. It’s always fun when they bring the small appetizer plates of seaweed, noodles, kimchee, salad. If you order the fried potstickers, you will love them! It was my favorite item that was ordered! I am still thinking about them. They were lightly fried and extra crispy because the wrapper was a thinner dumpling dough. Absolute yum! I got to taste the chicken bento box and was not impressed at all. The chicken had a peculiar color that made me questionable because I wasn’t sure if it was cooked or not. My favorite part about this place is how they bring out all the food on little carts… so cute!

This place is not Korean. It’s an impostor. And I say this for many reasons as listed below from the foods we tried from there.
1. Spicy tofu soup. So badly watered down I didn’t even recognize it. It tasted more like watery sour hot soup. And I think the tofu was spoiled because it had a sour taste to it.
2. Bean paste soup. Very badly watered down. It was hard to eat since I knew what it’s supposed to taste like.
3. Kimchee fried rice. Was good. I guess since they are already using the old Kimchee anyway, how could they go wrong, right?
4. Pan fried Mackerel. This was good. It tasted like typical mackeral. Best part of the meal.
5. Ban chan. The ban chan was okay. Better than what bowld in albany gives. They gave us the fish cake, chapche (clear noodles), Kimchee (was ok, tastes a little over ripe),
And that’s it! Wouldn’t go back for sure. We wasted two soups. And our dinner was $ 60

Came here with my boyfriend to try Ramen for our first times and came stumbling across this place. Upon entering the restaurant it has plenty of seating with lots of space and tables which is always a good thing. I ordered the Hawaiian Ramen bowl which came with pieces of spam. The spam was good and soft and not too salty but the soup lacked lots of flavor. I felt like it was missing so much more. My boyfriend ordered the curry chicken ramen and his was pretty good. You can taste the curry in the soup which was very flavorful. We also ordered the kimchee pancakes and the kimchee fried rice as a side. Kimchee pancakes were a big hit as the fried rice I was not a big fan of. I heard their bbq is good so we’ll be trying that if we come back.

Absolutely disgusting
I strolled into the Pacific East Mall looking for a bite to eat on Father’s Day and spotted the Kimchee Tofu House just a few steps beyond Ten Ren’s Tea, a fave tea spot of mine (and just about everyone else!) and decided to give it a chance.
I ordered Bibimbap and received a cold, foul, flavorless and unloved dish that arrived in less than five minutes (always a bad sign!) and was FREEZING! The rice, the sprouts, the tofu, every ingredient was absolutely frozen. Um, did I miss the part where everyone’s favorite part of the Bibimbap experience – the crusty, sizzling rice stuck to the sides of the stone bowl – was replaced with a frozen, frosty, freezing cooler of disappointment? Because that’s what I experienced. Paid $ 15 for a cold bowl of foul-​smelling, horrible food that I walked away from in about the time it took for it to arrive – approximately 78 seconds, I’d guess.
Definitely not worth visiting. Steer clear, folks.

This place was aight, I had better but then again I had worse.
The waitress kinda ignored me after they delivered my food. I ordered the BBQ beef lunch abc they came with small side dishes but I only enjoyed 2 out of 5.
There’s other better places then this in the bay.

I’ve been coming here for a few years since it’s the closest Korean restaurant to El Sobrante, its the old Koreana Kitchen II in Pacific East Mall, it may not be the best korean joint but it does the job and feeds my korean food craving without having to drive far! They have a dinner bento box that makes it super worth it since Korean bbq can get pricey
Today they re-​won my heart by having brown rice!

This is the only Korean restaurant in the 99 Ranch Plaza. Acceptable services with eatable food.
Location (⁴⁄₅): It locates right on the left side of the main entrance. It has two fronts right at the corner. So yea, pretty good for a location. The place is huge with plenty of seats. We came in during peak dinner time (around 6−7pm). There were not many people inside. Never have to worry about not having places to sit.
Services (³⁄₅): The waitor and waitress are relatively nice and knowledgable about the menu. Besides ordering our food and bringing out our food on a noisy cart, I have nothing to say about the service. I guess their choice of using the cart is a conscious safety decision to prevent any food-​spilling on their customers. Good on them!
Food (2.5÷5): We ordered the 8-​pieces original fried chicken ($ 10.99), mushroom tofu soup ($ 12.99) and kimchi fried rice with spam and beef ($ 13.99). The 8 pieces fried chicken came out very dry and disappointing. The Korean side dishes were plain… no comment really. The chicken pieces were not full large wings, drumsticks, thighs and breasts. They were tiny pieces not like the ones in the menu. With the kimchi fried rice, I expected the spam to be a little bit more crispy. If the chef was to make the kimchi fried rice a little bit «more fried», the rice will be more like «fried» rice than wet rice with kimchi. Overall, the mushroom tofu soup was the only dish that was worth the price.
I would probably not going to come back here for food. I would rather drive to Bowl’d Korean Rice Bar — a little further but affordable, and 100% satisfied with their food and services.

I think it’s a solid 3 stars, which honestly I think is a pretty good review. I enjoyed this place. Enough for me to come again. Enough that my parents (who are super picky, btw) liked it. They give you a LOT of food, the combo I got, albiet it was 20 bucks was HUGE! A huge soondubu and a HUGE bibimbap. They didn’t put an egg on my bibimbap though… they DID crack an egg in my SDB. Banchan was decent! Price wasn’t bad. They were preeeeeettttyyyyy slow though.
For lunch though, I wish they would lower their prices and give you a little less food. Overall, compared to the nearby vicinity and bowl’ed (yack) I think this place is a lot better. Their SDB is similar to BCD’s and they even give you the fried whole fish. It’s a little confusing because they also serve japanese food and stuff, but whatever. I’m glad that I don’t have to go to SF for my SDB fix.

I came here around 8:45 PM on a Friday night and was expecting to see more than 3 tables in the entire place being occupied, which should’ve already told me that the food was not going to be too good. But being that I was asked to meet up with a friend, I didn’t choose the location.
I honestly can’t give this place a good rating because I’ve been too spoiled by all the Korean restaurants that I have gone to in Hawaii and LA.
I ordered their Kalbi Tang, thinking it should be simple enough to make, but it was very bland so I had to add salt to give it any flavor at all. It helped a little, but not much. Their ban chans are very simple and not very tasty either.
Fortunately, their waitstaffs are all very friendly so that’s why I am giving them 3 stars. I most likely won’t be coming back to this place.

Nice korea food place in Berkeley
This un-​assuming place, located close to the entrance of a mall, is actually pretty legit. The inside is very well decorated, and feels like an actual korean restaurant. The banchan plate snacks was also very good, with a lot of variety and fresh ingredients. The bbq ribs was KILLER good, with wicked steam coming out and sizzling as it was being served. The spicy beef soup was also very tasty, with lots of beef, and even had noodles underneath. Definitely legit k-​food my friends
Worth coming back over and over again. If I lived closer this would totally be my regular Korean food place

I actually really like this place, I ordered the pork bento box, the seafood ramen, and the beef rib soup.
Loved all the little delightful dishes.
Beef rib soup was awesome– I would order extra meat next time.
Seafood ramen was really good. I did think one of the shrimps I had was slightly retarded and I really mean that it may actually be a messes up Borned shrimp.
The pork bento was good, filled with delicious yet overpowering salads.
Service was attentive enough. I will def come back.

Kimchee tofu house is really just not that great of a Korean restaurant. If it wasn’t for it having no wait and for the dishes being cheap, I really wouldn’t go here over another Korean restaurant. The dishes aren’t anything special and aren’t as flavorful or cooked as well. Also, they really skimp on the small plates. It’s just very meh. I think their bento boxes also smaller. They give you less meat compared to before. Honestly, I just come here when I’m lazy and don’t want to wait for food.

This place use to be called Koreana House, but they’re now Kimchee Tofu house. The front wait staff are different so not sure if they have new management but their food seem to be a slight improvement over their previous tenant.
Overall you get lot of food and side dishes. Staff are very attentive (even though they did forget to bring our rice, the waiter was very apologetic).
The biggest sticking point with me is the price. Expect to easily spend $ 20 for lunch for a combo lunch but you get a LOT of food (tofu soup, lots of side dishes, bowl of rice, fried fish, and BBQ short ribs). My opinion is it’s worth the $ 20 for lunch, but it’s still hurts the wallet especially for lunch.

First of all, does some mechanism exist for merging this listing with the one for Tofu House, at the same address (in Pacific East Mall)? They appear to be one and the same.
This was our first time at this relatively new Korean restaurant, open for about a year according to the waitress. This is a large open room, attractively decorated; tables are spaced widely enough to give a sense of privacy. Our visit was about 2:00 on a Tuesday afternoon, and patronage was pretty light. We were seated immediately by a friendly young waitress, who appeared to be the only server on duty.
We both ordered a bento lunch, at $ 8.95. (Koreans use the term «bento»? News to me!) Our entrees were a nice tender barbecued beef and pork rib combination, and the spicy chicken, chunks of white meat in a moderately hot sauce. In addition each box contained a Western style iceberg lettuce salad; shredded daikon; macaroni salad (this somehow didn’t seem very Korean!), chap chae; an orange slice, and separate bowls of white rice and, of course, kimchee. Everything perfectly satisfactory, if not spectacular. Limited beer selection, with Pyramid probably your best bet. Chopsticks are the default tableware option, always an encouraging sign in an Asian restaurant.

My husband and I went for lunch on a weekday. I got the ribs bento box ($ 10.95) while he ordered the spicy beef soup ($ 9.99). I was happy with the portion size of my bento box. They did not scrimp on the ribs. And it was really flavorful. I almost didn’t want to share it with my husband. His soup was perfectly spicy.
When it was time to pay the bill, it was only then that I noticed that it was no longer Koreana Kitchen. I’m not sure if they also changed cooks or something, but I like it better now.

As I was walking around Pacific East Mall, I became very hungry and happened to see their Lunch Special promo. The poster in front of the restaurant looked good so I thought I would give it a shot.
I ordered the Chicken Bento Box special. At about $ 8.00, you get plenty of stuff to eat. My box contained: white rice, kimchi, noodles, macaroni salad, green salad, and chicken. The chicken was pretty average and didn’t have enough flavor. It wasn’t terrible but not too great either. The salad dressing and the noodles were good and tasted just like it would at other places. I didn’t like the macaroni salad and could have gone without it. Overall, the Bento Box satisfied my hunger but did not blow me away.
On the plus side, the service was fast and my waitress was really nice. Also, the restaurant is very spacious and there’s plenty of tables & chairs which is good when it gets really busy. They have a decent selection of beers if you choose to drink as well.
I would give this place another shot if I’m in the area. The food kept me stuffed for awhile and didn’t taste terrible. If you want an inexpensive meal and are looking for something fast, try this place!

Its not that bad… but then again, its not that good either lol
Hey what do you expect, I’m Korean and I have expectations! Lmao…
The side dishes (banchans) were okay. Just your average asian pickled pick of a daily dosage of a mommy medley veggie variety. Jinx!
The assorted tofu soup was very very bland. I was hoping for authentic flavor but instead tasted instant ramen style authenticity. Well la-​dee-​freakin da. =(
The beef (bulgogi) was inconsistent, inconsequential and inproper. Yes, a few pieces were tender and sweet. Then again, a few others were salty and stale. But in the end, there was just a big piece of Mooooo stuck together that was neither sweet nor salty. funtimes.
fool me once… shame on you boo boo
fool me twice, well that just aint happenin because I’m pickin where we eat next time. lol.

What I ate: Mushroom tofu soup, assorted banchans
Visit date: December 11, 2013
First time? Yes?
So…I’ve eaten in this restaurant before but I can’t tell if it’s the same restaurant. In any case, I had mushroom tofu soup, which was AMAZING up until I got bites of eggshell. The dock in star (I would have given them three stars) is purely due to the eggshell experience. But back on track to flavor… I got my soup «extra spicy» and they delivered! It was the kind of spice that fills your mouth and then goes away so you can still taste and enjoy the rest of your meal. There was a hearty portion of mushroom in my soup — always a plus! The banchans were delicious; my favorite was the fried salty fish.