Cho Dang Gol
Cho Dang Gol has been a tofu house on West 35th Street since 1997, and it makes the bean curd in the building. The room holds a Bib Gourmand in the 2025 guide.
Why go
The inspector's own pick is the sautéed tofu trio. Pork belly goes into the pan with glassy sweet potato noodles and kimchi, in a sweet and spicy red pepper sauce.1
Past the tofu it is Korean home food. Bubbling casseroles, spicy stews, cod roe omelet, eggplant rice and pajeon.1 Weekly and seasonal specials run alongside it.5
Order this / avoid
- Order: the kimchi tofu stew.
- Order: the sautéed tofu trio with pork belly.
- Order: the cod roe omelet, at least once.4
- Avoid: counting on a table at prime dinner time. The Infatuation found the waitlist full by early evening.4
What locals & experts say
- Ligaya Mishan, putting it on the New York Times' hundred best restaurants in the city in May 2026:
Every table gets a free dish of tofu made that morning, buttery curds of astonishing softness.
3 - Bryan Kim, editorial lead in New York for The Infatuation, rating it 9.3 in September 2024: the room turns out
treacherously hot fried chicken that steams when you break it open, seafood pancakes that fall apart like custard, and the city's finest tofu stew, stuffed with famous housemade bean curd
.4
Good to know
- Getting in: walk in. The house takes no bookings at all.5
- Where: 55 West 35th Street, in Koreatown.
Verdict
should-visit — Nobody in this kitchen is trying to modernize any of it, and that is the whole reason to come. Two of you is the right number to see the range of it.