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| - This house-cum-storefront has been home to several restaurants, but I think Anju is finally the right fit. The menu is comprised mostly of smallish plates of highly seasoned morsels for sharing with close friends or a date, which matches the cozy yet modern atmosphere. I say close friends because you'll inevitably want to order several rounds of dishes, and poach more or less from any given one, which makes splitting the bill evenly pretty much the only fair option (or getting someone else to pay :)). This is not the spot to have a one-main dish dinner.
With regards to the food, there is definitely some Korean influence to the palate used, but I would not characterize this as an Asian restaurant per se. In fact, the only disappointing dish was the thoroughly Korean bibimbap (hot stone rice bowl), which wasn't hot enough to give a crispy texture to the rice in contact with the bowl, and was also a bit underwhelming flavour-wise. I don't meant to sound as if I didn't like Anju, on the contrary I'm pretty miserly with my stars and this is a solid four! Now that we've got the limitations out of the way, on to the good stuff:
- The yam fries are super crispy and accompanied by a nicely spicy sauce. The portion is sizeable, so this is a good item to order right away and graze on as the other dishes come out haphazardly.
- Pork belly is available as the "protein" in several dishes....mmmmm. We did this for the lettuce wraps, which were fun to assemble. We also added pork belly to the excellent panko-crusted fried tofu dish, for good measure.
- The ox tail tortellini packs a good punch, especially with the very pungent accompanying soy sauce
- The calamari was decent (this was someone else's choice).
There were definitely others I'll have to come back and try, like the "chicken and waffles". The menu was recently updated, but is not yet on the Web site...I'm not sure how often they switch things up. Regardless, this is the kind of place where you could keep going back for favorites, but throw in some variety each time as well.
On the drink front, they do have a half dozen or so original cocktails, and a page devoted to Sochu (a strong rice wine) which can be plain or herbaceous, and flavoured with various fruit juices. The service was very attentive, yet unobtrusive, while the small venue makes the place lively (I'd recommend reservations on the weekend) but dinner-conversation quiet at the same time. With 2-3 dishes each, drinks, tax and tip, you're probably looking at about $50 per person for a very enjoyable three hour soiree.
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