Korean delights

Yes – another Asian restaurant already! I just love Korean food. My best friend’s family lived in Korea for two years and I had the pleasure of visiting one holiday – it was really fun and the food was great. This restaurant - Kimchee - is in Russell Square, central London. I came here on a Friday with four of my girlfriends and had a lovely meal and lots of wine! ;)

As we arrived at Kimchee we saw this incredibly long queue snaking all around the building – oh. Could we bothered to wait in the freezing cold for an hour? Yes !  - for Korean food, yes; and surely the fact that other people were doing it was a clear indication of the quality of the food. The restaurant is pretty swanky, as are the people inside it. Everyone was very well dressed; a lot of them had probably come straight from work. Our little group felt quite Sex-in-the-City-esque, as we sat there in our glamorous surroundings gossiping away. The cocktails are also meant to be very good although I didn’t try one. 

The restaurant has huge glass windows so everyone eating can be seen from outside. On the inside this same style continues, the kitchen is all open and you can see all the chefs working away which is such fun. The feel is very contemporary and open with high ceilings and funky modern lights. The big heavy wooden tables have benches rather than chairs, so getting in and out to go to the loo if you are in the middle of the bench can be a bit tiresome but if you take it in good spirit it´s pretty funny (after a glass of wine or two).   

I spent £20 on this occasion, but I did have 3 courses and wine! I think that’s very reasonable considering I was utterly stuffed, feeling very jolly and we were in central London! I would definitely recommend this place for a glamorous but inexpensive meal. Really good – I’m going to go again soon!

Now for the (good) nitty gritty stuff…

1. Kimchee (what the restaurant is named after!) is a traditional Korean dish of fermented vegetables, most commonly eaten as cabbage.  Love it on its own, but I ordered it to go as a complimentary dish with my rice – I couldn’t help myself however and wolfed it all down before the mains arrived – littlemisspiggy.com kimchee to me tastes like spicy and slightly sour crunchy cabbage. It is so delectable with just plain steamed rice. 

2. Tempura vegetables – my friend, Mel, is a vegetarian so she went for tempura vegetables for her starter. I love this as well but I always think of it as a Japanese dish rather than a Korean. It´s just vegetables smothered in batter and deep-fried. Deeeeelicious.  

3. Bibimbap! The best dish of the night. This is a signature Korean dish and when I went to Korea, I ate it all the time. It is such a comforting meal especially in the cold. It is basically mixed rice topped with vegetables, raw beef and a raw egg. The dish is fun because it comes in a hot stone bowl and as you mix everything together, the egg and the beef cook. It comes with a spicy chili sauce that you mix it with it – they keep it in a side dish so that you have control over the spiciness of the dish. I put it all in because I like it hot! ;) 

4. My veggie friend Mel had the vegetarian version of this so instead of raw beef it came with tofu. There are other options of meat if you don’t fancy beef.

5. Finally we finished the meal off with a scoop of yummy ice cream. This flavor is black sesame seed! Who in the world would have thought to make an ice cream flavor from sesame seeds? Well, it works, so well done to them! It’s not as sweet as most of the ice cream that I usually indulge in but it’s so nice and such a good way to finish off a spicy meal - all-cooling in your mouth. 

Pasca x