Restaurants

Young, cheerful staff raise Jin above the pack. Outwardly, the place looks like your typical Soho Korean off-white walls, black modernist furniture and granite-topped barbecue tables but what a difference a smile can make. At lunchtime, young Koreans crowd into the small dining room for inexpensive set lunches and filling box sets like cheyuk pokkeum (spicy fried pork) with fried glass noodles, cheon (Korean pancake), miso soup, kimchi and namul. In our opinion the boxes are better value than the set meals. We enjoyed the crisp onion and satisfying crunch of deep-fried noodles in our vegetable noodle set lunch, but the miso soup was small and namul was restricted to sesame-scented beansprouts. Bibimbap was nicely presented, but arrived in a bowl so we missed the ritual of folding it together in a sizzling hot stone pot. For a more substantial meal, try the barbecues; as well as beef, pork and chicken, you can feast on mussels, prawns or squid, and there are vegetable and mushroom barbecues for vegetarians.

Time Out Eating & Drinking Guide 2008