City, Korean Restaurant Guide

2022 Review: “Top Korean street/junk food”, say fans of Linda Lee’s K-pop-styled pit stops, known for their funky fried chicken and other luridly flavoured bites. In the second half of 2021, she closed her Covent Garden branch, leaving just Shoreditch and St Pauls open, but north London and Nine Elms branches are coming soon apparently.

“Magical Korean/French food delivered with precision and style that blows your mind with its brilliant combinations of flavours” continues to win acclaim for Woongchul Park & Bomee Ki’s “very likeable” passion project near The Shard (which was hailed as Top Newcomer of the Year by Harden’s after it opened in 2020). The cuisine is “reasonably unique for London with its fusion of European and Korean traditions” and the resulting dishes are a “delicate” and sophisticated combination of the two, with pastry (prepared by Bomee) a particular strength. Opinions on the room differ: to fans “beautifully decorated in quite a subtle style”, to others “comfortable if plain”.

2022 Review: “Top Korean street/junk food”, say fans of Linda Lee’s K-pop-styled pit stops, known for their funky fried chicken and other luridly flavoured bites. In the second half of 2021, she closed her Covent Garden branch, leaving just Shoreditch and St Pauls open, but north London and Nine Elms branches are coming soon apparently.

2023 Review: This Soho canteen is “one of the better Korean restaurants in town”, serving “authentic” Korean fast food headed by the dish it takes its name from – hot rice with savoury toppings that you stir before eating. There’s also a take-away option in the City.

This “tiny, unbookable but excellent” Finsbury Park stalwart has been a source of “great home-cooked Korean and Japanese food” for 15 years. It’s good value, too, which means it gets “a little crowded”. Cash only!

2022 Review: “A good local Korean, with all the usual suspects present and correct on the menu”. An unassuming place, not far from Goldsmiths.

2022 Review: This “lovely little Japanese restaurant with a very decent range” is a “very welcome option in Richmond”. Run by a Korean family, it has provided “sterling service” for 17 years.

The “convenient location” is a major boon for City slickers at this glossy yearling which occupies the mezzanine floor of the majestic Royal Exchange: London’s original trading centre which sits across from the Bank of England and provides an elegant and central (slightly institutional) backdrop for a meal. Open for a year now, it was the first project for former D&D London CEO, Des Gunewardena and his new D3 Collective. Feedback is surprisingly thin on its sushi, K-BBQ and other Korean fare, but nothing but positives to-date.

Basic Korean bar and canteen with a roaring trade on Deliveroo and dishing up cocktails washed down with fried chicken, kimchi and other impactful bites.

A November 2025 Korean BBQ restaurant in the heart of Theatreland. The aims to is fresh, authentic Korean dining as part of a communal dining experience. Guests gather around concealed grills to cook and share meats, vegetables, and contemporary Korean dishes complemented by house-made sauces.

2024 Review: On the Soho-fringe site of the much-lamented YMing (RIP), this April 2023 newcomer is a Korean BBQ bringing the pyeonbaek steam box to London – a three-tiered box made from hinoki wood, a type of cypress. It’s named after Cheongdam-dong, an affluent – and foodie – district of Gangnam in Seoul. It opened too late to inspire survey feedback – reports please!

“Believe the hype. It’s real!” – this year-old corner-site in Cambridge Heath is proving a “brilliant addition to the London restaurant scene”. Its “elevated Korean cooking is refreshingly different to many other Korean venues”: “home-cooked completely authentic food” that’s “packed full of flavour”. Service too is “incredibly charming” while the modern, white-walled space – if not perhaps an attraction in itself – is a “chilled room” that will do nothing to detract from the meal.

This “small and sometimes crowded” Korean in Kentish Town is an excellent option for “standard dishes like bibimbap” in North London – not a strong part of town for Korean food. The prices are “very reasonable”, and although it is geared around takeaway it can accommodate a dozen diners at a time.

On Stoke Newington Church Road, a Korean pop-up-gone-permanent-restaurant from former Galvin Brothers’ head chef, Joo Won. In his March 2025 review, The Standard’s David Ellis felt that “quality control needs a beadier eye” but that if Joo’s ambition was to “draw a local crowd to his cool wine bar/bistro, and give them something they’ve not had before, and at a price which feels very fair” then “he has sprinted past his own finish line”. A couple of weeks later, The Guardian’s Grace Dent hailed “a delicious, Korean-flecked hotch-potch” with unlikely-sounding dishes that work “surprisingly well” (“like a spicy bouillabaisse… with enough bite to make your forehead sweat”).

2024 Review: This “great local Korean” close to Notting Hill Gate tube station offers a “good variety of dishes” – including Japanese sushi and “super lunchtime bento boxes”. “It can get very busy, so booking is advised”.