As Easy as Bi. Bim. Bap.

 

 I wouldn’t say it’s difficult to impress my friends by taking them for Korean food. In spite of what my Korean chef friend Inkun claims – he does have very high standards – I think London has some fabulous Korean restaurants.

And I wouldn’t say Lucy and Dave are hard to please either. But I couldn’t help being delighted by the 100% success rate of lunch at Bi Bim Bap Soho on Saturday. No ifs, no buts, just a great lunch. On a rainy, grey February day in London, it was perfect to warm my hands around a mug of Korean root tea and eat colourful, tasty, healthy food.

First, Bi Bim Bap got my medal for most easily comprehensible menu. I didn’t have to explain it to my English friends. They could read it and pronounce it. This is clearly part of Bi Bim Bap’s marketing plan. Non-Koreans don’t have to worry about getting anything wrong. The menu also explains what Bi Bim Bap is and how to eat it.

Second medal, and I know it may sound irrelevant, but it goes to the loos: easy to find, clean and bright. You didn’t have to squeeze past the kitchen into a grimy corridor. Even in a smart Korean restaurant recently, I noticed the toilets were next to a stack of cardboard boxes and smelled of kimchi. So, thumbs up there to Bi Bim Bap.

I ordered two starters between three, and although the chive mandoo – dumplings – were OK, the real star was the rice cakes in spicy sauce (tteokbokki). Lucy noticed that the heavenly texture of the rice cakes was like gnocchi, and the sauce was pleasantly hot, not the sweet goo you get sometimes.

Almost all the mains are a variation on mixed rice, which is generally accepted to be the most popular Korean dish among westerners, and I think this is clever. You can see Bi Bim Bap easily being expanded into a chain. There’s enough variety on the menu – salads, meaty dishes, even some noodles. The emphasis is on fresh and healthy, my favourite things about Korean food. You can even get something quite special, a bibimbap with ginseng, gingko, dates and chestnut.

We all opted for the dolsot bibimbap served in a hot bowl: I had a mixed mushroom one, Lucy had a seafood one and Dave had a spicy pork one, and we all opted to pay the 70p extra to substitute white sticky rice for ‘more nutty, chewy and nutritious brown rice’, which is again a clever innovation. All were absolutely delicious. The bowls were so hot that the flavours continued to infuse throughout the meal – but the ingredients stayed textured and crunchy. Ten out of ten there.

So I’d rate Bi Bim Bap highly: easy, comfortable, the service is fine and the food is delicious. OK, though, there is one ‘but’. Is it a restaurant, or is it a café? When your lunch comes with squeezy bottles (red for gochujang, yellow for ‘miso sauce’), paper napkins and a wipe-clean table, I think it’s a café. Which is fine, but these aren’t café prices. £42 plus tip for a medium-sized, non-alcoholic lunch for three is pushing the envelope, certainly when you call yourself ‘affordable’, and when none of the meals we ordered came with any side dishes, or involved expensive ingredients. 

You’re paying partly for the location, practically across the street from Marco Pierre White’s Escargot and just off Shaftesbury Avenue. Although there are much cheaper places to eat nearby, I wouldn't hesitate to go back, not really. If you made an evening of it and lingered over a bottle of plum or ginseng wine, it might feel better value, and it’s also practical for business lunches.

The location is right in the middle of everything, and if you have a bit of room left, you must go a few doors down the street to the sensational Maison Bertraux for cream cakes in a quirky setting. So much for our healthy lunch.

Bi Bim Bap Soho (London) at 11 Greek Street is open Monday to Saturday 12-3 and 6-11. Menu on the website: www.bibimbapsoho.com