Imone — Restaurant in London

Another London Korean Restaurant Review (by a Korean - follow me for more!)

This is by far the best Korean Restaurant that I have visited in the whole of London.

Food: I went as a large group of 10 and they led us to an alley where we basically got our own room.

We ordered from the lunch set menu and because it was our very first time, we did not know what to expect, especially because most Korean Restaurants in London just taste of MSG.

But I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food, and it genuinely tasted like what mum made. The owner clearly had great pride in her food and was greatly justified. Tasted of natural ingredients and flavours that are so hard to find in other restaurants in the very same high street.

Service: It was decent but not brilliant, the lady with a lot of highlights was a bit rude and seemed impatient with me although that was the very first time that we met. None of them, except the owner, made us feel welcome, which is a bit sad, really. I understand that it was a busy lunch service, but it would be great to be a bit kinder and at least act like you care about the people you're serving, as a former waiter, felt really disappointed.

Honestly, I have struggled to find great service at most of the Korean Restaurants that I have visited in London. It can't be that hard to crack a smile?

Verdict: Food = Love : Service = 0

(Really conflicted but had to knock off a whole star...

We got seated pretty quickly, but had to share a table with two other people. Then we ended up waiting way longer than usual for our food (we've been regulars for the past three years). After a while, I noticed one of the staff moved three other customers from a small table to a bigger one, completely ignoring the fact that some of us had been waiting for over an hour for a bigger table. That’s when I think they realized they messed up.

The staff tried to make us switch tables twice. The first time was right after our food was served, and the second time was while we were eating. Both times were super annoying and totally killed the vibe. On top of that, the food was way too salty and didn’t taste as good as it used to. Overall, both the food and the service have gone downhill.

I also want to specifically mention that the short-haired, brown-skinned male staff member didn’t maintain proper distance from the female customers, which felt pretty suspicious.

Since we didn’t have a great experience, we politely asked if they could remove the service charge. Instead, they told us that service charges are now mandatory because of a new law. But then they also said if we paid in cash, we could skip the charge, which sounded pretty shady, seems like try to do something...

Cosy little homestyle Korean restaurant with a good variety of dishes. The front restaurant only seats 18, but there's a larger back room with more tables.

There was a 20-30 minute queue to get in, and although we were told that they don't take bookings and won't take phone numbers to call people (so they can wander around other shops while keeping their place in line) we noticed that they did this for the group before us. Everyone in the line seemed to have found this place on Google.

The food was good, but not so good as to suggest it's current rating of 4.6, or that it would justify the queueing and the travel to New Malden (that one's on me - we travelled from London in search of Korean food).

The spicy pork bulgogi was probably the best dish we had. The seafood and spring onion pancake was good - crisp on the outside and with good texture. On the down side, the texture of the tteokbokki wasn't quite right, the fishcake wasn't great quality and the sauce lacked flavour. I thought the gamjatang didn't have the rich, pork flavour that it should - plus also the first time I've ever seen carrots...