Soju Korean Kitchen

Good food, good service, valuable experience! I love ginseng chicken soup and BBQ so much! I would recommend my friends to go there and try something more.

We got the bulgogi and spicy pork belly, a side of mak kimchi, seafood pancake, a ginseng power cocktail and ginseng tea. Barbeque portions were quite good for the price, though the bulgogi was too sweet and lacked garlic. The pancake was underseasoned and limp/​soggy rather than crisp. No banchan offered. Kimchi was a tiny portion for £2.30 and lacked complexity (too easy on the fish sauce and garlic); the ginseng tea was roughly 3oz. We’ll try them again for their lunch deals and other barbeque meats, like the ox tongue, but would tentatively put them at 2.5 stars in the interim: not worth going out of your way for.

the beef hot pot here is amazing!!! the rest of the meal was average in my opinion. nice service but slow. drinks was slightly too small but nice. the beef bipbap was bland and needed a lot of the chilli sauce to make it tasty. overall a nice meal thanks to the amazing beef hot pot a good enough to go back!!!

I stumbled upon Soju whist wandering around SOHO looking for a place to satisfy my my ravenous stomach. It was around 3pm and I hadn’t eaten all day. I lucked out with this place. I ordered the bibimbap with seafood and it was absolutely delicious. My meal came out on a wooden platter with a sizzling stone bowl of squid, octopus, shrimp, vegetables, and rice –the bibimbap, a bowl of miso soup, and a generous amount of chili sauce on the side. The aforementioned plus oolong tea came out to be 10 pounds. The staff was friendly and the food came out relatively quick. Only complaint is that the food was too hot (as in temperature hot) to eat for a good 5 minutes (I WAS SO HUNGRY SO THE WAIT WAS AGONIZING!) I’m sure the Korean barbeque is rad too.

Great Service.
Food was lovely — Great Quality!
Food arrived relatively quickly

Awesome Korean BBQ! Lots of food at reasonable prices. Friendly, well spoken staff. We will be back for sure,

This was my go to place for Korean BBQ. The beef pork combo is a lot of meat for 2 people, so either go very hungry or don’t order too many side dishes! Their seafood pancake and bibimbap are also very good.

My co-​workers and I randomly found this restaurant during lunch and were so glad we did! Our server was very nice and friendly. I ordered the bi bim bap with raw beef and egg. It came steaming hot, so I was able to stir everything up to cook a little. It came with a small dish of the spicy sauce, but it wasn’t enough for me. We asked for more of the spicy sauce so the server brought over the bottle and asked us when to stop. I also ordered the vegetable pancake. It was okay, nothing special. My co-​workers had the lunch combos and ate everything. My lunch was so tasty, I’ll definitely come back here when I visit London again.

Having lived in Korea for nearly two years, my boyfriend and I are a bit picky about Korean food. We’ve tried lots of places around the Soho area and we’re pretty much convinced this is the best and most authentic Korean restaurant in the area. We’ve had the sam gip sal (pork belly) and we really enjoyed it. The kimchee is great and the service is really good.
The owners of this place also own O Food market which is a really great Korean market where you can buy the ingredients to make great Korean at home!

Food was great at this place, we went for the mixed seafood bbq which was great.
The Kimchi was outstanding, got me googling around for a recipe!
We were seated upstairs which cold, try to get seated downstairs unless its really hot out and youre in a large group.

It wasn’t a planned night out. At the very last minute, I decided to join a couple of friends here for dinner before heading on to a house party (where home-​made Bulgarian liquor would be served, mmm, but I digress). The venue is located in a by-​alley and easy to miss and the restaurant is very compactly arranged across two floors; however, the seating is comfortable and we were not quite piled on top of each other, which is a relief in this part of town. The waitresses seemed friendly and prompt in their service.
The menu looked extensive and particularly suited to dining in a group but because of the asynchronous nature of our plans, we decided to go the individual portion way. Due to lack of time, I decided to stick to a known preparation — dolsot bibimbap. When the hot stone dish was brought out with rice topped with fresh vegetables and beef, it was, as per traditions of the cuisine, mixed at the table by the waitress and the chilli sauce was added into the mix. The food was tasty although the ‘chilli sauce’ didn’t quite live up to its name. The kimchi was strictly no more than OK — the cabbage leaves were altogether too large to have absorbed the flavours fully and made for awkward maneuvering for what is usually considered a delicately sized pickle. They had an array of traditional Asian drinks, ranging from kalpiko, cinnamon rice gruel, plum wine, various herbal teas, etc — the drinks menu itself seems worthy of much exploration. All in all, I felt the 13quid/​head charge incl service was rather reasonable for what was on offer.
This place, I feel, has the potential to be a 4-​star if I go back to explore their BBQ and other group dining options, and I think I will! Beware, if you intend to pay using your credit card, they have a minimum of 15quid on the card.

I only had the Chap Jae, but it was really fresh and tasty! Thought a wee bit pricey for me, I’ll probably try it again sometime soon! Wish I had more to say, but that’s all for now.

it was fine. nothing special. we had the set menu which was good but didn’t satisfy some of the hungrier guys in the group. though i was more than full.
there is a great little nook of korean food places near the tottenham court road station that i’ve had better/​cheaper korean at so given the choice i would go back there.

Do NOT trust Time Out London.
My friend and I went to this restaurant because of it’s listing on the website. She ordered the Bulgogi and I got the Bi Bim Bop. Her Bulgogi was alright. My Bi Bim Bop was so bland. The blandest I’ve ever had.
You know that red spicy sauce that they sometimes put on the side for you to mix in with the dish? Well I usually don’t add that much (if at all) to the dish, just because I like the natural flavors of things, and I think that kim-​chi flavoring is just highly overrated. Anyway, everything about the dish was just completely flavorless — it’s like they didn’t even season the meat. I dumped the entire side dish of sauce onto my Bi Bim Bop, and it still tasted bland. I suppose I could have asked for more. But it was just sooo odd how this Korean restaurant had to give in to the English standard of being bland.
This is a small restaurant (like every other restaurant in the area). Service was good.

Having checked out Time Out London before attempting this, I guess I raised my expectations a little bit, but still, this doesn’t justify the quality of the food I had today.
I ordered Soondubu Jigae with a side of kimchee. First off, the Kimchee was almost completely white except for the speckles of red pepper. It was also plump like newly chopped up cabbage (maybe it was). I’m no kimchee expert, but I expect the kimchee to exhibit some color since it’s supposed to be fermented slightly. The kimchee also tasted extremely bland. It tasted like a burst of sour water that’s not even very sour into my mouth. For a restaurant solely providing Korean cuisine I expected real and better Kimchee.
My next complaint is the rice. The rice must have been sitting for a long while, it had coalesced into inseparable chunks, which tasted like sticky glutinous balls of starch.
The only highlight was the soondubu itself. It tasted magnificent. Plenty of seafood and tofu, flavorful, with traces of crab.
I would not order their Kimchee again. But would go for Soondubu.

Soju had a good time at this restaurant? Hehe — sorry, couldn’t resist the poor pun.
Soju actually wasn’t my first dining choice for the evening but as my usual go to places either had long queues or no tables, I ended up looking at the menu in the window of Soju, which had a large number of happy looking customers inside.
My friend and I were seated upstairs. Although the place was very busy, the staff were excellent and really attentive, especially when cooking our Korean BBQ — sometimes, in Korean restaurants, I have to watch my Korean BBQ overcook in front of my eyes while the staff dissuade the customers from doing it themselves while not paying close enough attention to the food.
We started with haemul pajeon for starter, a seafood omelette, which was quite substantial and tasty.
Being keen to experience cook at the table Korean BBQ, we went for a mixed meat platter. The staff werre excellent at recommending food and what I initially thought was upselling actually turned out to be an essential dish of spring onion with chilli, which complemented the meat perfectly toegther with dipping soya and sesame seed sauces. In fact, my friend and I agreed that perhaps that dish should be part of the BBQ package.
We had 2 types of beef, pork belly and chicken. My favourite was some super tender beef — I think it was the rib. All 4 meats had distinctive flavours and made perfect mouthfuls with the aforementioned spring onion and sauces.
This has been added to my list of go tos in the West End.

Going there every time to have korean food and I have to say it absolutely delicious, the Dolsot Bimbibab is a must try as is delicious, but not the only thing, everything in the menu I have tried so far hasn’t disappointed me.
Not the cheapest place but neither really expensive. Really worth a try.

I read the review below mine, and it’s normal to have the occasional bad incident in an eating experience. My experience in the Korean Kitchen was very different.
The staff were very attentive to my husband and I. Very. Our glasses were never empty and an empty plate never sat on our table very long. My favorite at any Korean restaurant is the japchae, veggies and meat with glass noodles. Their japchae was made with fresh ingredients and not too overwhelmed with sauce. Their food presentation was nothing too fancy, but still very nice. And my husband had no hair/​s in his soup, so no complaints from him, only compliments. He said the best part about it was that their dumplings are HOMEMADE. You can always tell by the way they’re wrapped. We will definitely come back to try the Korean bbq to have our hand at grilling on the tables!

I was in London for the Chinese New Year celebrations and had no chance of getting in for a Chinese meal, but finding the Korean kitchen was a great thing. I had a nice relaxed lunch time meal and had good service from the staff as they explained Korean food to my friend who had not tried it before.
I could just eat Kimchi for ever, it is a lovely side dish to have and the other side of vegetables was a delight, so clean and fresh tasting. I tried the Bulgogi and it lived up to my expectations. As soon as we were in the restaurant I knew I wanted Bulgogi and I was not disappointed.

Recently I went into Korean Kitchen for lunch and ordered the kim chi chigae. I was happily tucking in when I saw a hair in the soup. A short, black hair. My hair is neither short nor black, so I told the waitress. She apologized, and went to get another soup. Now, I know a hair in a soup can be an innocent mistake, so I was very polite about it. That said, I was not happy while I waited another 10 minutes for a second soup – my rice had gotten cold in the meantime. I thought it would have been polite, in light of the hair, to at least bring me a cup of tea or something while I waited for the second soup.
So then the second soup arrives. I stir it a bit, looks good. I’ve had about three bites when I see ANOTHER HAIR. Again, short and black. It is clear that someone has been brushing his hair over the pot of soup. I summon the waitress and show her the hair. She apologizes and leaves me sitting there, ostensibly to get another soup. Absolutely disgusted but not wanting to be rude, I sit there for a few minutes and wait to see if they are going to offer me a free dinner or their firstborns or something. Apparently not, they are just getting me another hairy bowl of soup.
I go to the counter and tell the waitress that I’m just going to leave. She asks me to wait for the manager. I wait at least 5 minutes for him, and when he arrives, I tell him that I’m disappointed and that I’m leaving. He apologizes vaguely and asks me to wait for the third soup. I decline. At this point I was not only enraged by the hairy soup, but by the fact that I was bullied into waiting even longer for the manager who then said and did nothing about the situation. Isn’t it usually common practice to try and placate a customer who you’ve repeatedly tried to serve your disgusting follicles to? It’s my feeling that after the second round of hairy soup I should have been offered a free drink, minimum. I attempted to be polite about the whole thing, but felt very badly done by when I walked out. Frankly, I was far more upset but the reaction (or lack thereof) to the situation by the Korean Kitchen management than I was by the hairy soup.
I’ve just taught Korean Kitchen an interesting lesson about marketing. A happy customer tells a friend, an unhappy customer tells everyone that will possibly listen. Now you can thank me and skip business school.