Lime Orange — Restaurant in London

Lime Orange is a buzzy little Korean restaurant in Victoria, hidden away on Vauxhall Bridge Road. It’s pretty tiny inside and unassuming at first glance. However it is super busy (it was packed out the Tuesday we visited until about 9pm), which is the sign of a good place. Service was friendly and efficient with plenty of recommendations for top sellers and food arrived in a pretty speedy fashion.

There is a small drinks menu, featuring a handful of traditional Korean drinks, a solo beer option, wines and a larger selection of soft drinks. We had a glass of the Trebbiano IGT Rubicone, Rometa (£4.95 for 175ml), a delicious white wine to compliment the fish, veggies and chicken.

The menu has plenty to choose from, including a number of veggie options (and ones which can be altered to vegan) too, from from tofu udon, to kimchee bibimbap and vegetable mandu.

We tried several of the top sellers and most popular options, recommended by the team. A true feast, as it all arrived at about the same time. The spicy calamari (£6.90) was beautifully battered (not too much so), with a fab sticky sweet chilli sauce. A great side.

The Pa Jeon (£7.40) was one of the best of the night. It’s a savoury Korean pancake, with seafood and spring onions. Served with a soy sauce and apple cider vinegar dip, it is seriously tasty! Think Spanish tortilla with substitutes for the potato and more of a Korean taste. Delicious!

The Soy chicken (£7.70) was a great side/starter too. Deep fried wings tossed in sweet and tangy soy garlic sauce, they were crispy yet tender. Finished with sesame seeds, they were pretty darn good. However, the sticky yangyeum Korean fried chicken (also £7.70) took top place. These were same deep fried chicken wings, this time in sticky, sweet chilli sauce with ground nuts, they were dreamy. The sauce was super sticky and sweet and the chicken tender yet juicy.

The miso soup (£1.80) was a nice break between trialling dishes. A palette cleanser, but still tastier than I expected. We loved the Salmon Teriyaki (£11.90) – soft and flaky, yet packed with rich flavour. It arrived on a bed of a la dente beanspouts, alongside a side of lettuce, cucumber, carrot and spicy bean paste for serving. You can create your own salmon wraps which was messy but worth it!

The Tofu Bibimbap (£10.20), was delicious too. Soft rice, plenty of greens and veggies, a perfectly soft egg yolk, and crispy yet soft tofu, it was a fab mix of colours, flavours and textures. If you haven’t had it before, once mixed together, the egg coats quite a bit of the rice (if you stir it well), giving almost an egg fried rice feel. It’s so good! We love a bibimbap, and this one impressed.

We could quickly see why this is a busy spot. The service is really friendly, the atmosphere is buzzy yet relaxing, and every dish we tried was fresh and delicious. The best bit is that it’s affordable too! Lime Orange is a fantastic Korean restaurant in Victoria that definitely satisfies...

UPDATE: I am revising my review based on a positive resolution. The restaurant promptly addressed our concerns after my initial review. They acknowledged the oversight with the missing meal and the service fee, and I was refunded for both. This demonstrates their commitment to rectifying the situation and ensuring customer satisfaction.

To encourage me to give them another chance, the restaurant generously offered a voucher for a future visit. Their responsiveness and excellent customer service deserve commendation, reflecting their dedication to providing a better dining experience.

Service: They charge you 10% service even when the service left much to be desired. One dish was delayed, with the staff assuring us it would be ready in a few minutes. However, we ended up waiting for an additional 20 minutes, only to find that they had forgotten the missing dish. As a consequence, all the other dishes had turned cold by the time we inquired about it. The staff's lack of attentiveness was evident, as they did not check on us even once after serving the food. A simple check-in could have prevented the mishap with the missing dish. It seemed they were disinterested in ensuring customer satisfaction and didn't welcome feedback to improve their service. Despite the mistake, they still charged us the full price, disregarding the fact that our dining experience was negatively impacted.

Atmosphere: There were some issues that affected the overall impression. The dining area felt quite dark, and the tables were sticky, giving off a sense of uncleanliness. The barbecue device built into the table had noticeable food residue and black dirt, which was off-putting. Even the menus were sticky, adding to the sense of untidiness.

Food: Unfortunately, the dining experience at this restaurant fell short of an authentic Korean experience. The bibimbap lacked flavor, with old-tasting rice and poorly spiced ingredients, resulting in a rather mediocre dish. Finally, they serve Japanese miso soup, which is quite unusual for a Korean restaurant. The overall taste of the food failed to capture the essence of Korean cuisine. Additionally, the stews were disappointing, lacking in...

Will preface this by saying the food other people around us ordered did look good, especially the bibimbaps, this is therefore a review specifically about the dish we had along with the general atmosphere and service:

Food: Had the army stew hotpot, the price tag alone at £37 should've been the first red flag but since it said it served 2 people we went for it. For context, at the same price you could get two entire pork or chicken bibimbaps AND an order of fried chicken, and still have a pound to spare. So obviously we expected this extremely pricey dish to be worth it. What we got was the shallowest hot pot dish with the barest amount of spam and sausages, a lot of onions, some old veggies and a block of solid packaged ramen placed vertically perpendicular on the plate (wish I had taken a photo when it was served this way), also no cheese slices like other Korean restaurants usually serve with army stew. The position of the noodle block was such that when we had to flatten it into the soup, it splashed everywhere, not quite sure what the logic of putting the noodles like that was. The 15 pound army stews I've had elsewhere had a lot more meat, heartier flavor, and fresher vegetables, with large portions. Utterly disappointing, and again I'm sure we would've been happy if we had ordered two bibimbaps and a fried chicken but would really tell anyone to stay away from ordering the hot pot, severely overpriced for what it is.

Service - Lackluster, and not proactive, politely asked for water multiple times only to be ignored and finally got it after a while, any other request including our food order had to be flagged a few times to have the servers come to the table, without which they basically stood talking loudly in a corner

Atmosphere: Nothing to write home about, however the hotpot burner was dirty and unsanitary without having been wiped so having it right near the plates wasn't ideal, the decor was minimal, and the place overall was decently lit.

Overall: do NOT order the hotpot, the other dishes looked really nice maybe order them as takeaway or on an app because the service isn't...