Restaurants

By Judy Joo

This cosy Covent Garden restaurant, decorated simply with colourful rice paper lanterns and calligraphy scrolls, is classier than most neighbouring Korean cafés. It’s also a departure from the usual Korean barbecue places, which are often smoky and noisy and churn out brutely presented cuisine. There are no tabletop barbecue grills here. All of the beautifully executed dishes are cooked in the kitchen and carefully finished with delicate touches such as baby greens and microherbs.

The menu lists most of Korea’s famed dishes such as kalbi (sweet grilled beef ribs), jap chee (vermicelli noodles tossed with beef strips and veggies) and jigaes (bubbling stews served in stone pots), as well as some less well-known traditional items.

Our haemul pa jun (a seafood and onion pancake) initially disappointed with its small portion size. However, it was chock-full of yummy surprises—mussels, squid, clams, prawns and spring onions. Mixed namul (mixed Korean style vegetables) piqued our interest as well, with thinly sliced shiitake mushrooms and courgettes kissed with roasted sesame oil to jazz up the mix.

The sizzling stone bowl dish called tolsot bibimbap had us swooning. The sculpted round of red bean rice, showcasing six varieties of marinated vegetables surrounding a glossy egg yolk nuzzled in a mound of flavourful sautéed ground beef was gorgeous. Another surprise was the scoop of flying fish roe flanking our egg yolk. Eagerly, we stirred it up with the accompanying bright red chili sauce and scraped our bowls clean.
Du bu seon, a dish of steamed soft tofu flecked with vegetables and artistically drizzled with sweet sauce, was elegantly finished with whispering baby herbs. Grilled sea bass fillets presented on a bed of steamed veggies tossed in a citrus sweet glaze had clean fresh flavours and an addictive tang.

There were only two other tables occupied the night we went. Naru is still new on the scene, and the Covent Garden/Soho area isn’t short of Korean restaurants either. This little treasure, however, offers a more civilised and interesting option than the somewhat predictable surrounding venues– the loving care that owner and manager Yeonee Kim puts into her food and service is apparent.

Time Out London Issue 2034: August 13-19 2009