Tofu In Name Only

So a friend of mine rings me up earlier this evening. She's had a few and is nice and toasty as well as hungry. Did I want to go eat with her, she asks? But of course! A little while later she comes over and we head on out to our favorite plaza in Houston, 9889 Bellaire Boulevard. This is the home of the throughly awe-inspiring Cafe Fu Fu and numerous other mom & pop businesses concentrating on places to eat. If you can't find something to eat in this plaza, there is no hope for you, in short. We decided on Tofu Village, a new Korean establishment that a food critic acquaintance of hers had raved over and sallied on in. The staff was extremely friendly and attentive, and we managed to decide on our food in short order due to a very nicely laid out and cleanly printed menu, though it had the usual "Engrish" descriptions that were a little better than usual. We ordered what we thought was a reasonable amount of food and totally forgot that Koreans like to lay a formidable spread of little plates of vegetables as well as bowls of rice along with the entrees, and the next thing we knew we had a mountain of delectables before us! She got tofu soup with clams, not spicy at all (she's from Michigan, they don't do spice out there), and I got the deluxe spicy tofu soup that was full of slivers of beef, whole clams, prawns, and whole green lip mussels as well as lots of soy blobs that were squiggly and wiggly and throughly yummy. We also split a scallion/egg pancake full of seafood and an order of steamed ribs served on a bed of onions on a hot comal rather like fajitas. The soup on her end was savory and delicious, she said, far from bland. My soup was a bright orange melange of intense flavors that was indeed nice and hot in more ways than one, and the raw egg I whipped and stirred into the soup solidified quickly it was so temperature hot. My friend told me the top of my freshly-shaved head was turning pink from the spice, too! It was a good hurt. Best of all, all the soups on the list, about ten different varieties, were all $6.99 across the board! A steal! The ribs were extremely tender and juicy, with small bits of bone and lots of meat hanging off of them, not like your typical ribs where you have to gnaw like a rat to get the morsels off the bone. In this case, it was well worth it. Did I mention that Koreans serve a plethora of little tidbits with the meal? We had the usual kimchee (just hot enough), a pile of dark red slivers of something that was nice and spicy hot, seaweed and pickle salad, bean sprout salad (which I loved, it was nice and nutty/toasty), boiled potatoes in sweet sauce, big stone bowls of steamed rice, and we each got a whole fried whitefish that was mild and perfectly fried up. The pancake was perfect, hearty and delicious, served with chojang (sesame oil/soy sauce based dipping sauce) on the side, and it really hit the spot. And we ended up with leftovers! Houstonians, start your engines and head on over to this place! We then went to a nice little gelato place across the way where I got to have durian flavored ice cream for the first time (an intense experience and relaxed. Cute Asian girls at the counter were a nice bonus, too, of course. A nice and casual way to end the night.