Zazza Korean Noodles — Restaurant in London

As a Korean who grew up in Los Angeles and ate stellar, authentic homemade Korean food and restaurant food regularly growing up - I've been craving Korean style Chinese dishes like crazy since we moved to London (craving it with a desperation!) We've tried so many different restaurants in the city center, and I was close to just giving up and resigning myself to only getting to have the jjajangmyeon I loved when we visit LA and Seoul... UNTIL THIS MORNING. We visited Zazza today right as it opened at 11AM and it was everything I wanted I felt like crying the food was so good! We ordered the gan-jjajang (black bean noodles with the thicker sauce), tangsuyuk (crispy deep fried pork with sweet and sour sauce), goon mandu (deep fried dumplings) and kkang poong saewoo (deep fried shrimp with sweet and spicy sauce). The flavors were bold, concentrated and well balanced. And the NOODLES. :O Zazza makes their noodles in-house and you can really tell the difference! The noodles had just the right amount of springy-ness, and the jjajang sauce was flavorful and came with visible chunks of vegetables and pork. The tangsuyuk was awesome, and I appreciated how well seasoned the filling of the fried dumplings were (to the point that I didn't really need the soy sauce for dipping, which is rare). The sweet and spicy fried shrimp is visually stunning and also very delicious (it's not actually spicy** spicy, there's just a bit of warming heat, and I think even those who can't eat spicy food could still enjoy it). The only thing I can think to note about the shrimp dish is that it was quite heavy on the batter. To be fair though, in my experience ordering this dish at countless restaurants in Seoul, LA, etc. - I've found that it is always batter heavy (maybe because it is really hard to get the batter to stick to the shrimp unless you get a lot of it on? I don't know... either way I love it, but I know my husband always says he wishes the shrimp had less of that thick fried batter on the outside). All in all, we had a stellar meal at Zazza and I can't wait to go back to try their jjampong and other offerings. It's a trek for us to get out to New Malden, but Zazza is well worth it. Can't recommend it enough! (P.S., also: the kimchi is fantastic. Apparently, chef makes...

My husband and daughter came here before and wanted to return, so this time we came as a family of 5.

1. When I called to book a private booth, as soon as I told the woman on the phone the reason I need a private booth is because my autistic daughter (was about to continue about struggling with noise, but I didn’t need to) the woman just said ‘say no more, the booth is yours’ which was the first sign of an understanding and caring place!

2. First impression: like a sort of secret garden place - hidden restaurant - big and beautifully decorated - very cool!

3. The service (waitresses & chef) was amazing! Kind, attentive, quick and funny. The best part? As a 36 year old wife and mother of an 18 and 14yr old who were with me, I was asked if I was over 25 for the alcohol I ordered! At this point, I didn’t care whether I got the alcohol or not - that waitress made me day/week/month/year! 🤣❤️

4. The food was outstanding! Absolutely delicious and plenty! We ordered a lot! 🤦🏼‍♀️ but took some home too. So yummy!

Friendly, happy, funny, welcoming, inclusive staff in a hidden beautiful restaurant, served by staff who tell you that you look young, and beautiful food! What more could you...

We turned up at 3:15pm and was told they had run out of vegetables so for us to return at 4pm as they were preparing more. So we went for a stroll and returned at 4pm. Once we got there one of the ladies told us they were closed until 4:30pm which was a bit frustrating but fair enough so we went for another stroll and came back at 4:30pm. We were then seated and quite a few people were coming in (it’s quite a small place). We were given a menu and told that they won’t be taking orders for another 15minutes so by this point it had been about 1.5hours since we first tried arriving. About 25 minutes passed and the lady came over to take our order, we ordered 3 dishes all which came pretty quickly but it was so disappointing. I find it hard to believe these are hand pulled noodles, they tasted like packet noodles. Our noodle soup tasted really watered down, the black sauce noodles were mainly cold and hard (we were refunded on these) and the fried pork was so hard and chewy. There were other frustrated customers when we were there and one group even left. I’m seeing lots of amazing reviews so perhaps we caught them on a bad day. But from my experience I would not go back and sadly would not...