Marinated cucumber and spinach and mushroom and carrot, soft rice cakes in a spicy sauce, a hot bowl of soup with kimchi, vegetables and tofu... Lucy and I loved the food at Corean Chilli in London last week. (And yes, I do know what they're all called in Korean!) Although the outside looks unexciting, stuck at 51 Charing Cross Road among tourist shops and on the edge of Chinatown, immediately we walked in we were salivating at the smell of the food, and the menu was full of all our favourite noodle and rice dishes, and most of the customers seemed to be Korean, a good sign!
The only problem? We were stuck in a rather unappealing concrete corner of a room with terrible acoustics, so in the end we could barely hear our own conversation... But the makkoli helped. Makkoli, if you don't know, is a kind of Korean wine made with rice I believe. You might be confused if you only looked at the bill, which says 'Makkoli (grass)' :-) :-)
Food was delicious and Corean Chilli lived up to its name. But just in case you think us girls only ever go for lunch, my next stop (OK, after a bit of shopping in Covent Garden) was the Korean Cultural Centre to take a look at the latest exhibition:
It's about re-interpreting traditional Korean living spaces, and while it was fairly sparse and not the most exciting exhibition I've seen there, there were a few striking pieces, including this which I thought was fairly spooky, ceramic versions of the fixtures and fittings on traditional doors - but without the doors - which felt rather meaningful somehow...
But funnily enough my favourite thing was a tiny little piece of paper I found pinned to a noticeboard downstairs - and a cultural centre should be about this kind of thing too, so I left feeling happy:
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