8.0
Great
Bars

Hongdae Pocha

Before Hongdae Pocha arrived in Soho, London had been suffering from a lack of retro-style Korean pubs for the last, oh, two thousand-ish years apparently.

It’s styled after the pochas (the Korean equivalent of pubs) of the North-East Asian peninsula in the ’70s & ’80s, and if it’s anything to go by, then they were a hell of a lot of fun. It seems to be the one place in the world where disco balls, corrugated steel roofs, indoor BBQs, K-pop, and vintage advertising all comfortably intersect to create a whole far greater than the sum of their parts.

Enter Hongdae Pocha, and after soaking up the pumping music and the bubbling atmosphere, you’ll settle into one of the booths covered in twinkling lights, steel roofs, and plenty of graffiti. Encouragingly most of that graffiti is in Korean, and it’s actively advocated by the staff – you’ll find your own pen clipped to your menu.

Hongdae Pocha

Speaking of menus, the one at Hongdae Pocha is packed with Korean classics; specifically the kind you’d find in a ’70s & ’80s pocha (we assume). Some of it’s challenging, some of it’s comforting, and some of it’s spicy enough to make you hallucinate. There’s everything from good ol’ fried chicken with yangyum sauce or garlic soy, to a plate of stir-fried whelks in a punchy chilli sauce, to a ribeye-loaded hot pot laid on your table with its own gas-burner.

Of course, since Hongdae Pocha is a kind of pub, there are plenty of drinks too, with gallons of soju, Korean beer, and cocktails. So popular is soju in Korea, in fact, that they have a whole variety of soju & beer pairings available, like the Te-sla, in which you pour Terra beer into a glass of Cham Eseul soju. It’s delicious, and you’ll wonder how long until good ol’ British pubs catch on. Then there are cocktails, which range from highballs to a number with contains an entire iced lolly dipped into it. The idea is for it to cool the drink and gradually flavour it at the same time. The lolly, by the way, is a Korean classic called a Screw Bar.

It makes a neat twist on the twist.

 

NOTE: Hongdae Pocha is open Monday – Saturday, from noon till half midnight. You can find out more, and make a booking at their website right HERE.

Hongdae Pocha | 26 Romilly Street, W1D 5AJ


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Hongdae Pocha


26 Romilly Street, Soho, W1D 5AJ

0207 287 1585

8.0 | Great