On the Bab is a cute little Korean place on Old Street serving up 'anju' (food meant to be eaten with beer) plus a whole host of other Korean staples and otherwise.
Unfortunately, the food flip-flopped between tasty and tasteless or 'takeway Chinese'.
We ordered a range of dishes to try out all the different things they did. First to arrive were the kimchi jeon – a kimchi pancake, and the bibimbap with bulgogi beef. The pancakes - delicious and cripsy, working well with either the surprisingly light chilli oil, or the more pungent chilli sauce.
The bibimbap was pretty hopeless. We were advised to put some of the chilli oil on it, which we did but even this didn't really give it much of a taste. It all comes in a bowl and you're supposed to stir it all together, normally making sure it all gets coated in the flavouring. This had none, not even any lovely meat juices gathered at the bottom. Also, I'm sure when I've had it before it has come in a really hot dish, with a raw egg on top which cooks when you stir it in. This had a partially fried egg which was too cooked to really get distributed throughout and the whole dish was verging on cold. There was also rather a lot of it, which, when it's not that great, is not a good thing.
Next came the yangyum chicken which was a tale of two halves. The soy garlic nuggets really allowed the crushed peanut to come through and were nice and crispy, with a strong garlic and possibly lime flavour. The sweet and sour were also crispy but were too reminiscent of takeaway sweet and sour chicken for me, getting quite cloying and sickly after a while and overpowering any peanut. The garnish of julienned cabbage with a sauce was really nice though. I had ordered the 'small' serving (as opposed to extra small) and we must have had at least eight pieces - it was another substantial dish.
We ended on a high with the kimchi rice balls, bab twigim, which were packed with gooey cheese and came with a knock-your-head off chilli sauce.
I wanted to like this place, and hoped it would be a better alternative to Jubo, where we liked the chicken but didn't like anything else. But it was too much pot luck as to whether you would like what you got. And if it was really good fried chicken I was after, I would forgo both the Korean places and head to Clutch!
Find the menu & restaurant information on Zomato
I had somewhere I needed to be at 9 so I was keen on getting to Jubo fairly early. Not quite as early as we were, as we managed to get there literally as it opened and were the first to arrive, which kind of buggered up our ordering. We wanted to try the pork buns but as they'd only just opened the kitchen, they would have been a half an hour wait so we didn't get them - we got more chicken instead. This may have been a blessing in disguise.
So, we had a seat while they finished properly opening up and ordered a drink. Stephen got a Korean beer (£3.50) and I had a glass of Merlot (£5). We looked over the menu and eventually made our choices to get a variety of what was on offer.
We ordered 4 chicken wings - two soy garlic, two hot and sour, the bulgogi sandwich, some kimchi slaw and two pork buns. When we decided not to wait for those, we swapped them out for three hot and sour chicken strips and some chips. The steak buns weren't available that night as they didn't have the steak for them (though, weirdly, this didn't affect the bulgogi rolls).
The chips came out first and they were not a good opening salvo. They were clearly some form of frozen 'steak fries' not made on the premises. I mean, yeah, they tasted ok, but you don't go out to eat oven chips you could have made at home. They were also way too salty. Coming soon after were the kimchi slaw and the wings.
The wings were gargantuan. And not split into their composite parts, which was a shame, as I'm a bit squeamish about pulling bones apart. I got Stephen to do it for me. They had a very crispy batter, glazed with the different flavours, and the hot and sour ones came with sesame seeds. A nice touch. These were both really tasty, I preferred the hot and sour versions, as the soy garlic ones were a smidgen too sweet to eat a lot of. Happily, when we ordered the chicken strips, we'd chosen the hot and sour version. These were by far the best dish to come out - such huge strips of chicken we thought they must be on a bone. But they weren't! Inside was juicy breast and/or thigh meat, with the crispy skin all over the outside. Fantastic.
The coleslaw was nice, it did have a different taste to it that had to be attributed to the kimchi, but this could have been stronger. The bulgogi was also fine to eat - I liked the roll it came in, it was just what I picture when thinking about 'subs' but it could have done with a bit more filling On the other hand, the steak inside wasn't fantastic so maybe there was enough of it! It either was overcooked, or of not great quality (or both) as it was quite chewy. Stephen would like it known that he thought this was worse than a Subway steak 'n' cheese sandwich but I don't think anything is worse than that.
The chicken they do very well and I would go back for that, the rest left us dissatisfied. Of course, they have only just opened, so there is plenty of room and time for improvement and perhaps this is the peril you face when you go to a soft opening. Speaking of which, the bill was quite a good consolation as they have 28% off until Thursday so we only paid £15 each including service. Even without the discount the prices were very reasonable, with the most expensive thing being the rolls which were £6.50.
