Woo Jung

Average Korean food. Portions were on the smaller side and they were stingy with the side dishes that usually come with the meal. Positive is that they accept credit card. Ambiance is a bit dingy. The kalbi ribs were a bit on the dry/​bland side and kim chee was a bit too aged for my taste.
The maan-​doo kuk soup was nice as was the bibimbap.

My personal best Korean spot until further notice.
We all know the rules… if you enter an ethnic restaurant and see many patrons of matching ethnicity, it’s probably a good spot. On my one and only visit on a late evening, it definitely rang true. My knowledgable friend ordered for us, and it would be the first time I tried proper Korean BBQ. Oh my stars. It’s been a year and I still dream about the bulgogi I had… phenomenal. No other Korean spot I’ve been to in the USA or London has compared.
This is the real deal… go!

Nice restaurant with good, prompt service. Kpop playing in the background, while you consume the generous portions and side dishes. The food is delicious and the prices are really good. Especially the lunch menu. Great variety of authentic Korean dishes. Wish it was a bit more spacious though…

Woo Jung is a simple «quick n easy» Korean diner. The food is good, especially the flavoursome beef stew and soft glass noodles. The restrictive choice of cold drinks is disappointing with only soft drinks, aloe vera juice, rice punch making up the non-​alcoholic options. Yet the food menu is very extensive indeed (my photos attached). It is not a restaurant of luxury, the plates are plastic, the music is from a TV screen without extended speakers and the rice punch served from a can. However the open kitchen is a nice touch, live plants lining the window sill, waiters at hand in uniform and general décor all indicate that this is a traditional and long-​standing establishment that has not changed over the years. Being a small place, beware that there may be a queue and you may be ushered away as soon as you have finished your meal. In short, Woo Jung is a good place to satisfy a craving of Korean food or to ease an appetite quickly and effectively but not a restaurant that you can enjoy at leisure.

The restaurant is old and the atmosphere wasn’t the best. But the food was cery tasty and cheap.

Woo Jung, I like you because you were there for me! When you’ve got a massive bibimbap craving after getting of a ridiculous ryanair flight + the tiring bus ride to liverpool street, you’ll be so thankful that Woo Jung’s open till 2am. Plus, when you amble in with your suitcase at 1am they’re still happy to serve you and don’t try to chase you out even as it approaches 2am. What more could you ask for!
Feel like I’m not qualified to comment on ‘authentic’ Korean food but there’s little more satisfying than a hot bowl of kimchi tofu soup on a cold day. Or a massive bowl of bibimbap for that matter. On the downside, their jap chae’s kinda bland — also, I prefer mine a tad sweeter (is it even meant to be sweet? I like the one at Myung Ga in soho!) and less greasy. Will be trying their hotpot next time, lots of Koreans were having it, so it must be good! Ha.

So I’ll admit that I’ll be biased with this review. I lived in Korea for three years, and I currently am able to access some pretty decent quality Korean in Canada. So this place was a massive ‘meh’ for me. Especially considering the price.
I understand they can’t serve the same amount of sides as in Korea, but I’m not sure why Kimchi was being charged extra and they had ‘re-​interpreted’ other traditional side dishes.
The service was typical for the area, unfriendly. The food itself was a mix. I got myself the deokbokki which had an alright spice level but was oddly sweet. I don’t quite recall the names of the other two dishes, but one was your typical spicy sauce meat plate that was by far the tastiest. The last dish I can’t remember because I don’t actually remember ever eating it in Korea. I didn’t recognize it, nor did my Korean friend.
The makgeolli was an awful brand and was missing the traditional fermented/​carbonated zing that one loves this drink for. For the price it was quite disappointing.
I don’t know much about the Korean options in London. I kept being told that this was one of the best. And it does do a good job of generally capturing the flavours of Korea. It’s certainly popular judging by the line of folks that desperately stared at us eating. But I’m guessing that if you head to the other Korean area in one of the suburbs of London (or so I’m told) I’d imagine you could get yourself better quality.

I’m always a fan of Korean BBQ and this place satisfied my cravings for juicy and tender beef ribs and kimchi spicy soup. My friends and I ordered the seafood pancake, which is surprisingly tasty. The sauce they give on the side seems to be a mix of soy sauce and ginger so it’s truly is a complimentary for the pancake.
Do order the beef ribs that is marinated with sesame oil. They serve it perfectly and you may want to add more rice to add it’s perfection on your mouth. We also ordered the baby octopus hotpot which was amazing! It is served in a hot stone bowl and the portion is enough for four people! It’s a great deal for a meal since it’s £20 a bowl for the medium one. The hotpot has everything from vegetables, tofu, sliced beef, and baby octopus. The soups tastes really good and sweet if you stir them all together to the very bottom part of the bowl because that’s where all the juices are.
I ordered extra kimchi because Korean food is incomplete without it. Kimchi also adds the flavor when I included it in my soup and it’s good to eat with rice and a slice of beef ribs.
Woo Jung gets really busy after 7 so make sure you come earlier or make reservation beforehand.

This is a proper hole in the wall and I loved it. Looking for somewhere to eat near Tottenham Court Road can be a challenge, so this was an easy option. They had a whole bunch of stuff outside that weren’t on the menu though, so maybe if you want something there, know before you go in.
We easily got a table at 6.30, but after that it started to fill up. It’s clearly a real Korean place known to be good by real Korean people and not tourists. We ordered a seafood pancake to share and a couple of BiBimBaps. The pancake was fantastic, easily the best I’ve had. I’m still thinking about it now.
My friend got the raw beef bowl with raw egg and I got the pork Dol Sol BiBimBap. Mine was spicy, damn! Hers was not, so we traded off bites. Mine did have the delectably crispy rice from cooking in the bowl. Mmmm. We paid about 16 pounds each, so it was pretty reasonable.

Becky H and I were looking for a light dinner before seeing the Lego Movie (which is pretty fun — go see it). Since we were near TCR, we opted for a bit of Korean food and Woo Jung fit the bill.
The restaurant is spread over two floors with the ground floor being more spacious leaving the upstairs level crammed with tables. You may be asked to share a table with others if there are just two of you but this seems to be a fairly common and accepted practice.
The menu is quite extensive with all the usual favourites and a few interesting items. Portions are very large in size but light on meats and fish. We ordered the seafood pancake which was the size of a dinner plate for just under £7. While tasty and excellently executed, we were hard pressed to work out where the seafood part actually was. Still, I’m happy to eat it again and, compared to other offerings in the capital, it’s a good value proposition.
We also opted for a seared beef bibimbap which comes out sizzling in a stone bowl. The flavour is authentic although not too strong and the sauce predominantly chilli without the usual sweetness. Unfortunately, our bowl must not have been hot enough as we had very little of the typical crunchy rice crust that is one of the defining features of bibimbap.
Overall, it was a pretty decent meal with fast efficient service. The décor is a bit lacking and you should be prepared to eat in close quarters, but for a quick meal before a show or night out it’s perfect.

I was in London with my mom and we accidentally stumbled upon this place. We had just arrived from Italy and was craving Asian after days of pastas. Being Korean we were soo excited to eat here! My eyes got big every time a waiter walked by with dishes of amazing looking Korean food. I had the spicy noodles and my mom had a chigae (soupy stew). We both inhaled it all. But then after we ate it we both looked at each other and said «I’ve had better» haha. Maybe it’s because we were both deprived of Korean food and anything remotely Korean would have been good? But I will say the dishes coming out of the kitchen looked soo good and I would go back to try them. But that’s probably because I live in a city that’s hard to find good Korean eats at?

Despite being a little unassuming from the outside, and somewhat small and cramped on the inside, Woo Jung turned out to be a little gem of a find in the centre of London. The staff are friendly, helpful, and very attentive. Typically we ordered a little bit too much food but because it was so tasty we managed to eat it all much to the amazement of another couple on an adjacent table. We ordered the BBQ meat dish which was very tasty and marinaded well. The cod fish pancakes were very good indeed and The battered spicy chicken was fantastic, but the beef stew on the lunch menu was just ordinary. The bill was reasonable and we left definitely wanting to return again.

This place is amazing. Always packed which is the only problem but easily resolved by waiting! Every dish here is like Seggxual Healing by Marvin Gaye! One word Enjoy!

Probably the only Korean joint in the neighborhood that accepts credit cards.
Their kimchi pancake was hefty, enough to satisfy. The chigaes make for a nice varietal group dining option. They could dispense with more spam in the budae chigae.
Side dishes (apart from the sprouts and starchy cubes) cost extra. Though, to be fair, that seems to be the norm in London.

Great Korean food for a reasonable price. Been here so many times and I’ve never been disappointed.

Ok i was trying to go to Seoul Bakery but as usual there were no seats so i walked in here and I’m very glad I did. I got my own table instead of sharing a table like the other place.
My friend was disappointed at Seoul Bakery for not having Dol Sol BiBimBap but they have it here on the menu!
Very reasonably priced and a wide ranged menu. They have snack type things like the ramen and go all the way to the Jun Gols that you can share with multiple people and they have tables!
The interior is simply decorated with hanging paper lanterns and theme is shoji paper inspired. Don’t know what shoji is in korean. But it’s native to Korea as well.
It’s small and well lit and if you want something. It’s hard to be missed here. But sometimes you gotta call out like a korean. Say, Yuh-​ggi-​yo. Means «here» but we use it in the context of «excuse me». That’ll get your server to come right over and that class is your korean lesson of the day!

This is a tricky one to review. Look at your time here as an experience, and you will enjoy the adventure of being immersed in a different culture. Look at it as service orientated western dining and you will be bitterly disappointed. Woo Jung restaurant looks like a converted flat. The décor is minimal, uninspiring and expense has definitely been spared. There is a steady stream of Korean patrons who make up 9/10’s of the full restaurant. Maybe this is why the service was so appalling. The restaurant looks is busy despite all its short-​comings, and there are a few.
On entry we waited at the door between 5−10mins with other people looking for tables and nobody approached us. Waiters looked at us, conversed amongst themselves and walked on by. Taking the bull by the horns I sauntered upstairs to seek out a table. Arriving upstairs a waiter asked me if I minded sharing a table, I didn’t mind.
Sarah S and I were immediately given menu’s and it wasn’t long before we traversed the at times odd menu. We settled on traditional BBQ beef, deep fried chicken, steamed rice, pan fried noodles and crispy seaweed. About ten minutes after deciding, our order was taken. I took about 20mins for our crispy seaweed to come out. Unlike Chinese crispy seaweed, this stuff came out in sheets. We’d been bestowed with beansprouts, so putting two and two together we made wraps. They weren’t great. Quickly after the seaweed came the BBQ beef. It was a good ten minutes after the beef landed that we received anything else on the table. We had to ask for plates and chopsticks. When the rice arrived I was thinking great, here comes the food. We waited another five minutes for my chicken, and the exceptionally greasy noodles arrived as we were 2/​3rds of the way through our meal. Credit where credit is due though, the BBQ beef tasted exactly like hot, moist beef jerky. It was sublime. My chicken was… well… meh! I hate to say it but part of me felt like we were being treated a little less well than the regulars, because by anyone’s standard, the service sucked. We waited another ten minutes for the bill once it was time to go.
As this was my first Korean experience I enjoyed it because, I like the adventure of new things. In hindsight, nothing from the experience comes close to matching my favourite Chinese eateries, and the Korean part of Asia is safe from my carnivorous all consuming ways for a while yet. China Town, you are still my favourite.
As Lina G states, all the regulars seem to be eating kimchi. Hmmm… Do they know something I don’t?

Sometimes when I go to Korean restaurants I get a little paranoid. I wonder why all of the Koreans have a bowl of kimchi on their table and I don’t. When I went to Woo Jung and had this moment of terror, I asked for kimchi and was given a bowl twice the size of the ones on the other tables, and charged £2 for it.
The restaurant itself is sort of dingy and seems to be a hangout for Korean students. The service is bad, the waitresses make an effort to ignore you whenever possible. The food I had was pretty good. Middle of the road Korean but it wasn’t too pricey either, hence the three stars.

Woojung is a fabulous Korean restaurant. The food is truly tasty and inexpensive. I simply love the bimbimpa and chapche, it’s so delicious! I usually go with a group of friends and have the hotpot soup to share! Expect to spend about £15-£20 per person for a hearty meal.
The interior is quite down to earth and cosy. The great food however compensated for the modest setting. There are 2 storeys of dining area but are both quite small (a little too small for comfort when the restaurant is packed with customers). Getting a table is always a problem and queues are always long during peak hours. This is the only factor than deter me from going to often.

Solid Korean food in a humble setting. The food is fresher than the neighbouring Korean restaurants, and the atmosphere & service is very warm & inviting.
The best dish in my opinion is the Raw Beef served with Rice & Vegetables (with a raw egg) served in a Hot Stone Pot — you can mix together all the ingredients and the beef & egg cook within minutes.
The lemonade is also great. A fantastic option just near the Tottenham Court Road tube stop.