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There are a seemingly infinite number of restaurants in Manhattan's Little Korea—the neighborhood in the shadow of the Empire State Building—but few stand out. At Cho Dang Gol, though the restaurant doesn't look like much, there's one incontrovertibly compelling feature: fresh tofu, handmade daily on the premises. If you've always wondered why tofu, which typically tastes like a kitchen sponge, is such a mainstay of the Asian diet, here's your silky, buttery answer. — Steven A. Shaw

The primary mode of communication with the mostly non-English-speaking waitstaff here is gesticulation, which works well enough.