LDNReview
Seoul Bakery
Included In
The walls of our Infatuation office are covered in doodles. We have colour-coded boards covered in the names of restaurants we want to write about. We have a long list of new openings. And we have the word ‘swish’ in capitals to remind us to never, ever, use it in a review again. Basically, our walls are like A Beautiful Mind if you replaced every pi symbol with the word ‘chicken’. And that’s one of the reasons we like Seoul Bakery, a casual Korean spot with walls covered - and we mean covered - in doodles and declarations of love for BTS.
This Bloomsbury spot is tiny but packed in is a real buzz. The walls are covered in drawings of K-pop stars, scribble covered scribbles, and sweet nothings dated 2015. It basically looks like someone in the throes of their first hormone-fuelled crush got given unlimited BIC highlighters and let their inner Banksy fly. But that’s only one of the reasons why we love it here. There’s the constant chatter of students, the slurping of dak udong, the sipping of honey plum tea, and the solid smell of melted cheese that goes on top of their signature kimchi fried rice.
photo credit: Karolina Wiercigroch
While you can expect that £7 kimchi rice to be excellent, you shouldn’t expect to be comfy. You’ll be wedged on a seat between other people. Don’t resent it. This is the pre-order special. Your chance to perform a sneaky sniff test of your neighbours’ pork dumplings and beef ghimbap to decide what you want to get involved in. Cheat code: you want all of it. The £8 squid-packed seafood pancake is the sort of dish that prompts you to buy a pillow embroidered with ‘cherish the simple things’. It isn’t cheap and cheerful. It’s cheap and deliriously tasty food.
The only issue with Seoul Bakery is that the secret is out. The secret being that you can come here, eat some banging rice and noodles, and leave £15 lighter with a pack of Korean candy in your bag for later. On any given day, lunch, evening, or mid-apocalypse, you’ll find a queue for spaces on one of their two six-person tables. We’re not talking a little, good-natured baby queue that involves a three-minute Twitter scroll and casual eye-up of the laminate menus stuck to the window. No, we’re talking half-an-hour, consider bribing someone, and eventually decide that Unchained Melody was an ode to getting inside Seoul Bakery. They also shut at 7.30pm, so sometimes you have to play a game of queue roulette if you’re heading here after work. But when there’s bulgogi this tasty waiting on the other side, it’s high risk, high reward.
photo credit: Giulia Verdinelli
What Seoul Bakery lacks in booking potential and big group hang capacity, it makes up for in flavour. You’ll merrily declare “I’m alone” to be shuffled in with that group of three up front and decide that those thick, wipe-down menus are all you need for company. Coming here alone is basically like winning Love Island in reverse. That’s why Seoul Bakery is perfect for a quickfire lunch where you purposefully order extra fried rice to take home for dinner. And why it’s perfect for a catch-up where you get all that talking done in the queue so you can slurp up your ramyen noodles in silence. It’s also why you’ll find ‘Seoul Bakery’ doodled on our wall, under the heading Best Cheap Eats In London.
Food Rundown
photo credit: Giulia Verdinelli
Pork Dumplings
photo credit: Giulia Verdinelli
Beef (Bulgogi) Ghimbap
Toppokki
photo credit: Karolina Wiercigroch
Kimchi Fried Rice
Seafood Pancake
photo credit: Giulia Verdinelli