A Ri Rang Tofu House

Food was decent, but the service was ridiculous.
We arrived at 2:30 pm.
After the food came, the waitress brought us the bill and asked us to pay. Her English was poor, so I didn’t know why, but we did include her tip.
She told us to just leave the dishes on the table after we finished our food. HUH?
She left the restaurant after we paid and never came back.
So we didn’t get any service after, yet we tipped her.
A little after 3 PM, all the lights in the restaurant were turned off. Luckily, we sat close to the window.
Note to restaurant owner: if you are closing and can’t accommodate your guests, please tell them so and offer them a take-​out menu instead.
Note to self: please don’t come back to this restaurant.

Very nice to accommodate a large family of 10 about 25 mins before closing. The beef and seafood tofu stew was nice and hot, flavorful and regular price. The U.S. to Canadian dollar conversion made a big different overall price. 1.4 exchange rate.
The korean side dishes was too meager for our liking which it’s why the four star rating.
Overall service was proper and would come back here again.

Been here several times before & really love the seafood pancake here! It has crispy bits on the top layer, which not many other places’ seafood pancakes have.
The soft tofu soup combos here are a great value. My favourite pairing is the dumpling soft tofu soup + bibimbap (as shown in the pics below). Other combinations include different types of bulgogi (meats) instead of bibimbap.
I also love the mushroom & meat stew pot here! Lots of ingredients in a large sizzling pot that cooks at the table. One pot is more than enough to feed 2 hungry people, or more — if you are ordering other items too.
As with most Korean restaurants, the standard 3 – 4 side dishes (bean sprouts, potatoes, kimchi etc) are always included.
Service is great and the owners are always warm & friendly! Found out they originally operated their Korean restaurant in LA before moving here, & it was very popular there too.
Definitely one of my fave Korean restaurants here in Richmond.

The food tasted blend. The server, i think its owner, not friendly at all. The server gave us weird looked when we ordered 3 kinds of food for two elder and two adults and asked thats it. My parents didn’t eat a lot and they judged us. They didn’t give us all of our order so we just cancel it since we didn’t want to wait.

This place…
The décor shows remnants of its previous Greek restaurant roots, mixed with some 80’s decorations and sprinkles of Korean stuff. Sounds novel but actually isn’t.
The price
I feel every dish is at least $ 1 – 2 over what I’d expect to pay everywhere else given the proportion. I could be wrong, but $ 10 for a personal tofu hot pot is a little off. $ 16 for a plate of fried chicken also seems off to me. I never ordered the latter, so maybe they add something to warrant that price.
The service
Umm… It’s OK. Waitress both failed to attend my table, despite a few attempts to flag anyone down and direct eye contact. Maybe they were busy. They didn’t seem busy, but that’s visual bias.
The food
The mini appetisers (kimchi, potatoes, raddish, bean sprouts) were all pretty good. We asked for more which resulted in some resistance (it’s free food, so I get that). We ordered the kimchi hotpot and beef hotpot. We got 2 beef hotpots instead. You get to crack your own egg into the hot pot which I enjoyed. Comes also with a bowl of rice. The dish itself was not bad, but lacked a lot of substance.
Can’t recommend this place when there is so many better Korean places and/​or tofu hot pot places. Maybe it was a bad night for them?!

Our go to Korean place was full and so we happened upon this place. The Bulgogi Beef was fantastic, Jap Che great, soft tofu and kimchi stew was hot and delicious. The other part of my table had Kimchi Hot Pot with Pork and they devoured it. The place was pretty empty which was surprising given the quality of food. Service was very attentive and she brought us repeats of many of the little dishes they bring. We will return!

The old Cronos, sadly gone over a few years ago.
Some minor interior décor, less Greek-​like.
Ordered the chape char ‘glass noodles’ and the beef shortribs, and while tasty, it’s a bit on the higher side compared to the one at Lansdowne Mall. Just a notch down, plus parking’s tough here too despite having their designated 5 spots or
I’ll still return, food’s good here.
Credit cards ok.

Since I was staying at the marriot right by, I came to this restaurant for a «quick» dinner. Bad idea, the service was sooo slow. it took them forever to bring out my food, I really thought that they forgot me since they sat me sooo far away from the civilization. Finally the my food came, it was a decent korean food. nothing spectacular.

Just opened about six months ago. Came here for lunch and had the spicy cold noodles and enjoyed it. The Korean food was decent and great to get your K-​fix in Richmond. The spicy beef soup lacked some of the standard veggies () and apparently was more like a spicy bean sprout soup base. The pics were taken afterwards and so the shots aren’t that great, sorry folks. The spicy pork and soft tofu were good.

We came to this restaurant after plan A failed. First impression was this menu is similar to House of Tofu Soup. Menu is very basic. You can order the traditional Korean dishes and you can decide the spiciness of the soup.
We arrived here late afternoon so there were only two other tables of diners. It was past the peak lunch hour. Parking space was ample and it was nice not having to fight for parking.
Food was good. Not as amazing as House of Tofu Soup but it was good. My seafood and beef tofu soup had plenty of tofu, beef and seafood. It was served with a side of rice in a silver tin container. At House of Tofu Soup, I would have been served rice in a stone bowl for the same price. However, most places I have dined at I usually get a silver tin anyways. I picked medium spicy and the spiciness hit the right spot. The side dishes were good. It would have been better if they were more Korean inspired like those posted in the menu photos.
Service was extremely attentive. The server hung around the table and instinctively cleared plates as we finished. I felt like we had a personal butler as we were watched while we ate.
Overall, solid average quality Korean soup. Service was very good. Restaurant and washroom was extremely clean and well kept.

Just decided to try it out since it was hoisting a Grand Opening sign.
There wasn’t much to choose from but I don’t mind just eating classics. Like a typical Korean place, the prices were a bit higher. We ordered a tofu soup, short ribs, and a bibimbap. All of the dishes were great, and up to par with other locations. Nothing amazing to bring me back, nothing terrible to keep me away.

I love ‘Grand Opening’ signs… I really do. cause one. it’s painfully apparent that the place is new, and has just opened… and the other thing, especially with Asian places, is that because of their freshness in the market they are going to bring their A-​game… or one would hope! My dear, everytime we go home… looks a this place like bookmarking it on this website… but with her eyes and brain, this one was going to get knocked down, and what perfect chance to do, as a friend wanted some food before flying out of YVR, so here we go!
We came later in the night on a Saturday, parking was no problem, as they have some spots in this little strip mall. Walked in here and didn’t realize how big this restaurant was, with one side booth seating, another table seating, somehow we were placed in the more empty of zones. So we sat happily seeing what surprises (or non-​surprises) we were going to encounter on our new journey. The menu’s came quite quickly, easy to look at and just like a children’s book, with pictures of the food! They could have easily had one piece of paper to show their entire repertoire of food items, cause this menu had lot’s of white areas of empty space and there really wasn’t that much to choose from.
My dear was pointing on a picture of what we were eventually going to order which was a combo plate of grilled short ribs and spicy tofu soup with rice, and a vast assortment of banchan (6 dishes in the picture. really. take a look when you are here!) so our mind was made up. Our friend ordered a bowl of rice cake in soup, let’s just say I don’t remember as it wasn’t memorable enough for me to write about, and I was picking at his bowl cause he couldn’t finish, I’ll get back to this later.
So when our ‘combo’ came out I had to blink my eyes and rub the crust from them to clear me from what I saw in front of me. The grilled short rib’s were alright, like buying marinated meat from T&T and cooking it yourself in the backyard, the tofu soup like powdered MSG that I can get from a package of instant noodles, oh you can trick everyone else here, especially those in Richmond with a lack of high quality Korean joints around the area but you can’t trick me, or my significant other’s tongue for this kind of taste. And then come the banchan, which maybe the best part of the meal, I have the pictures and I am posting them onto Unilocal!!!,cause there was 6, SIX, 六, not 4 (there was an odd salad that made 5… but it wasn’t in the picture. it doesn’t count!)??? Give me my two missing bowl’s back! Even the rice was disappointing as it was served in a metal prison tin… come on. picture shows stone pot… bait and switch indeed… in a term that Richmond understands «aiya!».
We polished our plate off, and helped our friend polish his, and looking back at my bill, two orders of mediocre food shouldn’t cost me past $ 30, especially in Richmond after 9 PM. None of us were near full, and definitely no longer feeling for any Korean food from this joint, we were already plotting on where to go to next for food!
On a side note, even the rice cake (and I have had my fair share of Korean rice cake) in our friend’s pot was an in-​between from partly dry (soaked overnight) to fresh, I couldn’t make sense of it, and I love this carb treat! I hope that because this place is new they end up making a good run of it and turning this place around, cause as of right now… I don’t see myself coming back, and the notion of Richmond not having good Korean food is true to a point, this is not one of them.
The place is clean, the staff is friendly, but that can only go so far, I need the real and good on the food side and that is what is most important which they don’t have it knocked down. «Best Korean in Richmond» maybe on this block… as it’s the only one… wouldn’t survive in Coquitlam, that’s for sure!

2.5 stars. I don’t know how this place survives.
CONS
1. Limited menu — I don’t mind if you have a small menu but please at least have the decency to make every dish the best you can possibly make.
2. Photo vs. reality. Way off. As this was my first time dining at the restaurant I rely heavily on the photos to get a sense of the portion size. I ordered a grilled short rib on hot plate and a kimchi tofu soup with a bowl of rice. According to the photo there were 6 dishes of banchan but we (a group of three) got only 4 in total. In the photo my grilled short ribs were plated heaping full. I wasn’t expecting to get the same amount of food in the photo but the portion was way off. We got HALF of what was in the photo. In the photo the rice is served in a stone bowl, often cooked to order but we ended up getting our rice in stainless steel rice bowl which was very disappointing. I’ve been to Korean restaurants in Coquitlam and they actually give you rice cooked in stone bowl. If you can’t deliver, please don’t put it on the menu. I felt the photos were very misleading.
3. Food quality was lacking. I was looking forward to the tofu soup as the business name said it «tofu house». I was disappointed to say the soup tasted like the seafood broth powder mix you find in Korean supermarkets. It wasn’t homey or authentic. It tasted commercialized. Yes the soup was bubbling hot when it arrived at the table and there was a fresh raw egg with shell intact and all that came with the soup. My friend ordered a vegetarian dumping soup with rice cake in broth. I didn’t have any of the dumplings so I can’t comment. The soup base was alright — it had a good beefy broth-​y taste and mouth feel.
4. Cost. Amongst the three of us the bill came to a little over $ 30. The problem is none of us felt «full».
PROS
1. Friendly staff. Customer service was good. We were warmly greeted. Servers were easy to flag down. All the staff we encountered was courteous and helpful. We asked for refills on some banchans and they were refilled efficiently.
2. The space. The dining area is spacious and looks clean. There isn’t much décor or cultural touch but at least it’s comfortable.
From what I experienced, the food is definably not the «best Korean Restaurant in Richmond» as Francis W. said.

Yippee! Good Korean food in Richmond City Centre again!
We were regular patrons of Kimchi Nara in London Plaza. Since they closed, we have been wishing for another good Korean restaurant in the area (I love Haroo but hate their parking lot, and it’s a bit out of our way).
We ate here tonight and it was excellent. I had the spicy chicken with kimchi tofu soup. Husband had spicy pork and kimchi tofu soup. Everything was delicious. This is not cook your own, so the seating is comfortable (I hate whacking my knees on BBQ equipment).
Service was really good — young fellows who were paying attention to the guests. The prices were extremely reasonable. We will be back soon, and often!
If you are staying at the Marriott /​Sheraton /​Hilton, this is just across Minoru Blvd.

Newly open. Ordered short ribs, spicy chicken and tofu soup, loved them all; reasonable price too. Will def. come back to try more.