Korean food is something that seems very trendy right now especially with youngsters. This could be due to the rise of Korean drama and K-pop. As a result you’ll find numerous Korean restaurants popping up in major cities around the world. And London is no different. There’s actually quite a few Korean restaurants in the capital of England these days. And from what I know a few of them offer halal food too. Today, we’re visiting one of those: Mukbang Pocha. This post is going to detail our experience of our recent visit.
Mukbang Pocha and the menu
Mukbang Pocha (formerly known as Golden Square Mart) is a Korean restaurant in the heart of Soho London. They’ve got a broad menu with a lot of authentic Korean dishes to choose from. There’s tteokbokki, kimbab, bulgogi, k-dogs, Korean fried chicken and a lot lot more. If you’re into Korean food, or K-pop, or Korean drama, I get the feeling you’ll be impressed with this place. The menu is so impressive and expansive that unless you eat eat or come with a large group, one visit will not suffice. You’ll want to try a lot more than you can handle.
Read the menu here.
Is it halal?
The best thing is that most of the menu is halal. As you flick through the menu you’ll see the halal sign and you’ll find that most things on the menu are in fact halal. So you can try all the authentic dishes and live out your wildest Korean food fantasies. They do have some non-halal items, which are labeled clearly on the menu. I love how catering they are for Muslims. This is despite being from a country that isn’t Muslim and having the restaurant in the heart of London where they’ll get customers easily whether Muslim or not. And I have double checked with them – they ensure there is no cross contamination between the halal and non-halal dishes. This is important of course with restaurants that serve both because if there is cross contamination, the food wouldn’t be halal.
What we ordered and our experience
We ordered Korean fried chicken. You get to choose from a variety of flavours: fire, sweet chilli, cheese and onion, and honey soy. You can also get these separately in dip form as opposed to being coated on the chicken. We decided to get the original one, which is plain and we also got a couple of dips so we could try a variety. We opted for the fire and sweet chilli. The chicken was fresh and fried to perfection. You’ll struggle to find better fried chicken. And both dips were flavour packed!! I mean it. Flavour packed! So soooo goood. The fire one had a little kick to it too, which I loved and it was probably my favourite of the two. The wife preferred the sweet chilli one.
We also got Bulgogi with glass noodles. Bulgogi is slices of marinated thin pieces of beef and it paired well with the stir fried glass noodles. I don’t recall having glass noodles before, so this was nice to experience. I think the glass noodle part of the dish is known as Japchae in Korean. You can also get this with rice, which I feel I would’ve probably enjoyed more because I’m a big rice guy me.
And the last thing we got was Jeon, and this is what stole our heart!! It is a Korean pancake. You can get kimchi pancakes and seafood pancakes, but we opted for the potato cheese one. A tad safe you may say, so what we’ll say. This was delicious and actually the highlight of this experience. We were not expecting it to be this good. It was nice and crispy and very similar to Rosti- I would get this again in a heartbeat! You also get honey to pour over and this just elevates this dish even further! We couldn’t finish our food so we took everything away. It all tasted equally good the following day except for this. It still tasted good, but it lost its crispiness and became a tad stale and oily. So, I would strong recommend you finish this there and then!
I know most come here for dishes like the tteokbokki and kimbab, which we didn’t try this time. The rose tteokbokki does look delicious and like a very fun dining experience. But we just weren’t hungry enough to try such a generous looking portion of food. But this definitely gives us an opportunity to go back!
Getting there
Nearest station: Leicester Square
Nearest mosque: Muslim World League Goodge Street (10 minute walk)
Parking: Ossulston Street – free evenings and weekends – plenty of parking spaces on Sundays – about 20-30 min walk from Soho/Chinatown, but it is just outside congestion zone
Google Maps link
