– On The Bab – Korean Street Food in Old Street | Poppy Loves

“Excuse me, Twitter, but where should I go for amazing Korean street food in London?”

Twitter answered me almost immediately, (or rather @Elodie_Ldn did)…

So off I went on Friday night. Me, the lovely man and our two very hungry tummies to On The Bab. (‘Bab’ means rice.)

I had been trying to write and send an email from the tube at every stop since Euston, (it’s always a race to see if I can connect to the wifi before the train whizzes off to the next station..) but I hadn’t managed it. So, as soon as I arrived at Old Street Station and had popped up above ground, I pulled the map up on my LGG3, to see where I was meant to be headed, flipped to the dual-screen mode and and carried on writing my email while following the route on the map. Yes. Two things at once. Loving this phone more and more… and in about 5 minutes, I’d found it.

On The Bab - Korean Street Food in Old Street

Having a queue outside the door is nothing unusual here…

There was a hustle and bustle and a really fun, happy vibe in On The Bab. Everyone queuing was smiling, everyone eating was smiling and all the waiters were smiling… and I soon figured out why – the food was delicious.

We poured over the menu, marvelling at all the lovely words and rolling them around our tongues.. Kimchi, Kuk, Budae Jjigae, Bibimbab, Toppoki… we didn’t say them too loudly in case they thought we were ordering everything on the menu.

We opted for Yangyum (emphasis on the YUM) Chicken (sweet spicy Korean fried chicken with crushed peanuts) and Sakeng dubu (fresh tofu) to start…

On The Bab - Korean Street Food in Old Street, London

Biggest piece of tofu I’ve ever seen…

Sweet spicy Korean fried chicken

We made short work of that.. it didn’t stand a chance

The chicken was so yummy. I mean really really yummy. It was so yummy I had to apologise to our neighbours as the noises I was making were verging on inappropriate.

Plum Punch – preserved plum with honey and soda water

We both had virgin cocktails; I had plum punch, which was very sweet and refreshing, and lovely man opted for an OMG – ‘Oh My Ginger!’ which is a magical concoction of preserved ginger, honey and lemonade.

We also tried the Kimchi, on our lovely waiter’s recommendation. Kimchi is a traditional Korean fermented side dish – often cabbage, which is what we had. It came in a lovely little pot, which took me far too long to work out how to open.. (long day.)

Kimchi

And.. before we could decide whether or not we were full, (we were) we ordered THE BUNS. We had buns with spicy pork and we had buns with vegetable fritters. We had many buns.

And the buns were good.

On the buns..

I was very snappy happy over the course of the evening – (I had left my Canon camera at home, so again all my pics were snapped on my LGG3..)

My phone got a bit of attention from the Korean waiter too – he saw me snapping away on my Korean phone in his Korean restaurant (it was a Korean themed evening) and was very taken with the enormous screen and dazzling display! “It’s a Quad HD Screen” said I. (Ooooo – yep, I can be techy when I need to be.)

If you don’t know what a Quad HD Screen is, (and why would you) it means it has four times the pixels of normal HD. Which means it’s brighter and better and more amazing and waiters in restaurants will be impressed.

On The Bab was my initiation into the world of Korean food and I absolutely loved it. Great food, great service and a warm, cosy, happy place to meet friends, share some plates and not break the bank while you’re doing it.

And when you go, get the fried chicken. You will fall in love and never want to stop licking your fingers.

You heard it here.