A (home made) Korean night in London

So rather than go to a Korean restaurant, my friends and I decided to have a bit of fun and do our own 'Korean night' at home.

Before I go on, I want to explain that I am NOT a Korean food expert, so please allow for some allowance if things don't look 100 per cent authentic!  However, we did try our best and got all the ingredients from Korea Food Mart, a big Korean supermarket in New Malden, London - the town that's home to 30,000 Koreans.

We decided to make a Korean hot pot soup and a bibimbap.

How does this look?  I think it looks not bad!  We didn't heat the stone bowl for long enough though, but we'll know for next time.  As a result, we couldn't put an egg in it :-(.

For the soup, I got some beef slices, Korean beef stock, soy bean sprouts (much better than mung bean sprouts), Chinese leaf kimchi, enoki mushrooms, Korean glass noodles and tofu. I was a little lost on how to make the soup base, but it tasted good.  Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Yummy beef slices.

We washed everything down with some makgeolli rice wine, soju and Hite Korean beer.

What do you think?  Let me know if you have any suggestions for the future!

Han: a Korean bar in New Malden, London

As mentioned in an earlier post, New Malden is the UK's capital of Korean cuisine. But it doesn't just stop at food; there's a Korean bar called Han along the High Street too.

Han is strictly a restaurant, karaoke venue and bar - so I wouldn't be doing it justice by simply calling it a bar. It has a full food menu and six karaoke rooms, for example. But during my last visit to Han, I didn't eat or (sadly) do karaoke, so it was very much a bar for me.

They serve Hite, apparently the top-selling beer in South Korea, so no surprises here. I'm no beer expert, but it tastes fine to me - nothing particularly bad or good about it.

Most of our group (including me) were driving, so we stuck to the soft drinks after that. Han excelled in this department - check out my Passionate Cooler virgin cocktail! It certainly tasted as good as it looked.

This is what we all had (and seemingly in height order): Ice Tea Soju (alcoholic), Apple Mojito (virgin cocktail), Passionate Cooler (virgin cocktail) and a Crapple (virgin cocktail). All took a while to arrive, but the staff are friendly and the guy with the long hair who greeted us - possibly the manager - is very hospitable, so we didn't mind. Plus my friends all liked their drinks.

The full drinks menu can be found here.

Next time I really want to try Han's food menu and, if I can persuade my friends, sample one of the karaoke rooms! Looking forward to it already.

Closest station: New Malden
Address: 1 High Street, New Malden, London, KT3 4DQ

PS I found a picture of the interior on their website; this is what I mean by the exposed wood...

Source: Han

New Malden: UK's capital of Korean cuisine

It's said that New Malden in south-west London has the highest population of Koreans in Europe. So this should make it a good place to find decent Korean food outside of Korea, right? Definitely.

The truth is, I've been to New Malden many times, as I love Korean food. This was partly why I went to South Korea last year, as mentioned in a previous blog post.

Along New Malden High Street, you never have to walk far before you find another Korean restaurant or supermarket. Our target this time was Yami.

We ordered a soup full of kimchi, tofu, mushrooms, pork and sausages. It was easily big enough to share between three people, along with accompanying rice and other side dishes. It's a great communal way to eat - very social - but this perhaps wasn't the best Korean soup I've ever had. It was still good, but I definitely prefer beef in my Korean soup - I'll know that for next time.

I love Korean pancake, so much so that I think I order it every time I go to a Korean restaurant. Here's our a seafood pancake (haemul pajeon) and kimchi pancake (kimchijeon).

Korean food features many side dishes as part of the whole experience. So here we have Chinese cabbage kimchi, sliced potato, carrots and cucumber. It's not as spicy as it looks!

My vegetarian friend ordered this dish consisting of tofu, vegetables, rice and Korean glass noodles. It might not look very exciting, but I'm told it was extremely tasty. Seeing as everything else was pretty good, I'm inclined to believe her.

Closest station: New Malden
Address: 69 High Street, New Malden, KT3 4BT