Holborn
Korean food has been becoming steadily more popular in London over the years. Our first experience was at the wonderful Koba, before discovering KIMCHEE in Holborn, and over the past few years, KIMCHEE has flourished into launching two takeaway branches and now a bar underneath the original restaurant in Holborn.
Taking its name from the Korean national dish of pickled cabbage, the food at KIMCHEE is excellent and we can particularly recommend the Bibimbap. Our most recent visit however was to simply explore its new menu of drinks and cocktails now available downstairs. This part of town, situated between the City and the West End, is not littered with good bars and has been crying out for a quality cocktail venue for some time, and the area will certainly benefit with a new choice now available.
Our favourite cocktails were the refreshing Nabi Dance; a mix of white rum, sparkling wine, lychee and pink grapefruit; and the zesty Lychee Love, which mixes Finlandia grapefruit vodka with pomegranate and lychee juice. We also sampled the One Hundred Years, named after a traditional Korean toast to good health which mixes traditional bek se ju with cognac and green tea. One drink that worked less well however was the Kimchee Mary, the house version of the Bloody Mary which uses Korean spices rather than Tabasco, giving it a flavour closer to gazpacho than to the traditional brunch cocktail.
Overall, we enjoyed our experience at KIMCHEE, the service was excellent and the drinks on the whole were excellent. We would certainly drop in again for an aperitif before eating upstairs, although it is not quite a destination bar that would draw us in for a whole evening.
71 High Holborn, WC1V 6EA
Average price of cocktail: £8
Drinks: 3.5/5
Value: 4/5
Service: 5/5
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