Frank Sabatini Jr. | Restaurant Review
Within minutes of taking a table at DaoFu, guests receive a shareable, complimentary salad augmented with house-made tofu and dressed in raspberry-beet vinaigrette. The amenity makes for a favorable first impression and with even better things to follow.
Formerly known as Tao Restaurant, the Adams Avenue eatery changed its name last year while maintaining the same ownership and keeping in place a lengthy menu of Japanese-Vietnamese fare. The offerings furthermore reveal an even split between vegetarian and meat dishes. To our surprise, many of them incorporate Thai chilies depending on the degree of spiciness you prefer.
“Go with the low numbers,” a couple at a nearby table cautioned while clutching their ice waters. They had ordered a stir-fry at level 2 from the restaurant’s one-to-10 heat scale. I might have considered them wimps had it not been for the Vietnamese-style hot and sour soup we ordered in its basic default form.
Similar to Tom Yum and nothing like the darker-colored Chinese version, the soup delivered enormous flavors from lemongrass, cilantro, pineapple, sliced taro root, vinegar and blistering chilies that were naked to the eye. We ordered it with chicken, which yielded large, thin sheets of breast meat seemingly tenderized from broth’s acids.
Here is where the house-made soy milk came in handy. Served sweetened with crushed ice, it instantly killed the burn on our palates as we continued punishing ourselves along the way.
The GMO-free tofu is also made daily on the premises, appearing in salads, appetizers and entrees. It’s among the most flavorful and creamiest I’ve encountered, likely because its porous texture sucks in whatever sauces and ingredients come into contact with the stuff, as it did with the bright-red dressing draping our free salad. I’m told that the eggplant-infused tofu is all the rage. But a pure vegetarian meal wasn’t in our cards on this first-time visit.
After starting with a generous order of pleasing garlic wings and supple pork-stuffed gyoza (perhaps the most authentic Japanese item on the menu), we proceeded to some of the meatiest entrees on the menu.
Chicken, pork and shrimp occupied a mound of rice noodles in my companion’s “Eric stir-fry,” which he ordered at level zero. As with all of the entrees, the components were arranged attractively across a 15-inch plate. A smoky and delightful “wok breath” gave the dish its reigning flavor in the absence of chili peppers.
I chose the lemongrass center-cut pork chop at level 2. The heat factor was pleasantly manageable compared to the hot and sour soup, offering a fleeting burn that remained in the mouth instead of trailing to my forehead — not that I mind an occasional food sweat.
The medium-size chop was flash-fried and tender and served with perfectly cooked snow peas along with a molded cube incorporating both brown and white rice. My only caveat was that the lemongrass took a back seat to the soy sauce reduction on the plate, which was a little too salty for my taste. Cucumber spears and pickled radishes rounded out the scheme, which compatibly fused the tenets of Japanese and Vietnamese cooking.
We came away impressed by the restaurant’s obvious standard for using fresh ingredients and its ability to keep prices at reasonable levels. Service was swift despite a packed dining room that seats about 60 people. Decor is minimal with the exception of hundreds of favorable testimonies scribbled on the walls by locals who claim DaoFu as their neighborhood gem.
