Chungdam, Soho

I generally try and avoid focusing too much on service on invited meals. If the front of house know you're in to review they usually try and be that extra bit more attentive, and occasionally too much so, and either way it's rarely an accurate reflection of the average punter's experience.

However, rules are made to be broken, and I feel duty bound to mention the service at Chungdam because it's amongst the most pleasant, knowledgable and mesmerisingly efficient I've come across in a long while. The experience of eating there is like having your own personal chef and confidant, who patiently explains how everything works, offers advice on what goes best with what, and occasionally personally handles the cooking of certain items with a grace and skill that's so utterly transfixing it's like watching close up magic done with beef instead of playing cards.

Now, great service is rarely, if ever, enough of a reason to visit a restaurant by itself, but fortunately Chungdam is serving rather nice food and drink as well, to boot. Our welcome drink was a soju cocktail served in a very pretty frozen coupe glass, wide and shallow, that felt very special even if it did require both hands to safely pick it up. Or maybe that's just clumsy old me.

As you might hope and expect, house pickles were the first foodstuffs to arrive. Sesame beansprouts, house kimchi and pickled radish all had things to recommend them, but we particularly liked the radish which had that irresistable funk of daikon matched with a gentle sweetness.

Japchae arrived alongside the pickles, a dish of glass noodles with beef and wood-ear mushrooms, amongst various other stir-fried veg. Perfectly decent, although looking back at the end of the meal, almost painfully overstuffed with various different cuts of beef and noodles, I think this is one dish we probably could have done without. Would make a nice lunch by itself though.

The real excitement began with the arrival of the first beef dish, raw tartare with slices of pear. The sesame oil made a good dressing but what lifted this dish was the addition of at least an entire bulb (I may be exaggerating... but not by much) of raw garlic, which made the thing burn in the mouth like you wouldn't believe. I'm a huge fan of too-much-garlic at the best of times, but this was unreal. I can only apologise to anyone who shared my carriage on the southbound Northern Line later in the evening.

Alongside that arrived seafood pancake - very good, particularly the citrussy dipping sauce it came with - but eyeing up the five more courses to come on the menu and given how generous the portions had been so far we just tried a square or two each. Bear in mind though, this was a press menu, so you should be able to construct yourself something a bit more reasonable on your own visit.

I was very excited at the prospect of the grade 1++ Korean beef listed on the menu, and it was certainly very nicely marbled and had a good flavour, but in conversation with our waiter it turns out it's not actually Korean, or officially graded 1++ (think Japanese Wagyu grading but for Korean cows) but the closest approximation they could find from UK butchers. Which is absolutely fine and wouldn't have been a problem if they weren't listing 1++ steak on the menu, which I'm fairly sure is against some trading standards laws. So they might want to look at that and put it in inverted commas or something in the future. Anyway we greedily demolished strips of this ultra tender steak with chilli, sesame oil, salt and a number of other interesting dips and sauces, some of which I have no chance of remembering how to describe or spell.

Brisket and short ribs both came sliced ultra-thin, thus needing no more than a few seconds on the tabletop grill before they could be eagerly gobbled down. The brisket came with some nigiry-style pieces of lovely vinegary rice which made a great foil for the beef, but in almost all cases with the beef I preferred it either with the soy dressing or the sesame salt, both of which brought out the flavours in interesting and addictive ways.

A final savoury course of cold noodle soup with kimchi, which even through the fog of beef-addled defeat I could tell was a very intelligent and nicely constructed thing. I half thought about asking for some to take home with me but didn't trust myself not to spill it on the tube, so in the end ate as much as I could - which unfortunately wasn't much - and left the rest. I hope they'll forgive me.

Matcha roll cake was more easy to devour - different stomach for dessert and all that - and was excellent, made by their sister Japanese cafe Shibuya. I've heard good things about Shibuya actually, particularly their ice cream, so I'm determined to make a separate visit there one day.

Meanwhile, I shall continue to digest my meal at Chungdam and recommend wholeheartedly it to whoever asks. True, they've dropped a point or two for mislabelling the beef and for not having proper charcoal tabletop grills like they do at the more authentic New Malden joints, but the former can be easily fixed, and the latter is very likely to be a limitation of their Soho license, who knows. Either way, all that is made up for in spades by carefully presented food of vigour and imagination, and service that you'd cross oceans to enjoy. I imagine it's very, very difficult to have a bad time at Chungdam.

8/10

I was invited to Chungdam and didn't see a bill. I think if you had a normal amount of food and a drink or two you might expect to pay something like £60/head.