The search for that one really great Korean restaurant in London continued tonight with Sandra and my visit to Naru. Naru, located pretty much dead-centre between the three stations of Tottenham Court Road, Covent Garden and Holborn, is still somehow not that easy to find. I don’t think many people just stumble on to it at any rate.

The restaurant is cute with its silver chopsticks on the table, the pretty paper type lanterns and the wood framed calligraphy adorning the walls … but devastatingly no grills on the tables! Something we were a bit disappointed to see … or not see. But that wasn’t going to stop us eating of course and in actuality the grilling at your table is a bit a novelty and at least our clothes didn’t leave smelling of BBQ …

Dining at Korean restaurants, like dining at Chinese restaurants, always presents me with something of a dilemma – on the one hand I want to try all sorts of different and new things that I’ve not tried before, but on the other I also want to try the dishes that I always get so I can get the real measure of the restaurant. And as with many food journeys before this one, Sandra and I ended up taking the middle road – choosing some new and “old” dishes.

We started off with Kan so sae woo (which was basically deep fried prawns in a spicy sweet sour sauce) and Ke Sal gu jeoul pan (Pancakes with crab, mixed salad, sliced courgettes, carrots, mushrooms with mustard honey sauce) – the latter being my push for something “new”. The prawns were delicious if hardly challenging and the pancakes – well, not as exciting in flavour as I was hoping it would be – let’s just say they will never replace Crispy Duck Pancakes in Sandra’s heart (ha ha). At the very least it delivered some of those vegetable nutrients normally lacking in an oriental/asian meal …

We then followed these with our mains of Korean Fried Chicken (yep – still looking) and a Naru specialty – Special Sam Kyeop Sal (pork belly poached/braised in a special house sauce of chilli and soy) The KFC, again, alright without being exciting (search continues) but the Sam Kyeop Sal was divine though likely to be a little on the fatty side for most people’s taste (to me the fat just gave the dish that extra deliciousness …) Accompanying this was a fairly ordinary bibim bap (to satisfy our requirement for carbs.)

So overall food was pleasant without that O.M.G wow factor that would get me excited enough to get people to come back with me. (In all honesty we probably should have added one of the BBQ dishes to our meal to give Naru a proper test-run.) As a plus it wasn’t overly expensive (£26 each including a drink and service) and service was friendly and efficient (though sometimes getting the attention of the waitress was difficult .. like when we wanted to pay.)

I’m not writing this one off for a repeat visit just yet.