Miga.

Miga

Two national critics reviewed this room a year and a half apart and both of them ended up writing about the same plain white bowl of ox-bone broth.

Why go

The father cooks in an open steel kitchen and his two sons run the floor. The family built their trade in New Malden, where London's Korean community is, and the outside of this white corner building on Mare Street carries their twenty-two-year history in a text mural (Jimi Famurewa, Evening Standard, via Harden's). The mother still runs a takeaway in Morden.

What Famurewa wrote about the difference is worth the whole entry: this is Korean cooking "utterly unlike almost every other Korean in the capital", old school and new school in one shoebox room, and "There is Aesop in the loos, but a collagen salad on the menu and a bowed paterfamilias in the kitchen." He ate the seolleongtang, the ox-bone broth, and called it "ambrosial, milky, cleanly mineral".

Eighteen months later Tom Parker Bowles ordered the same thing for the Daily Mail and wrote that it is not much to look at, a bland, pasty white, with sliced green tops of spring onion scattered across the top. But just one sip and the cares and worries of the outside world dissolve. He would cross town for this alone4.

Between those two reviews the room collected the rest of it. A Michelin Bib Gourmand in the 2025 guide, one of eleven in London that year (Time Out). Number one on Time Out's fifty best restaurants in London for 2025. And 9.3 from The Infatuation, their top band.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the seolleongtang first, neat, before anyone puts noodles in it. Galbijjim, soy-braised short rib with Korean pear and shiitake. Yughwe, the beef tartare, with matchsticks of pear and a yolk. Maeun saeu, prawns in gochujang. Suyug, brisket with perilla seed aioli.
• Avoid: arriving at dinner without a booking, because that is the one thing that will stop you eating here. Writing off the broth for looking plain. Ordering everything at once, since lunch and dinner run different menus.

What locals & experts say

• Jimi Famurewa, Evening Standard, 18 August 2024: The result is a justifiably hyped, word-of-mouth success that honestly may be one of the best places I have eaten at this year. They talk a good game here. But, holy cow, do they back it up. On the short rib: beef so tremulously tender it slips from the bone with the gentlest spoon-nudge. Quoted from Harden's reproduction, which carries his byline and date.4
• Tom Parker Bowles, Daily Mail, 1 March 2026: the most thrilling Korean food I've eaten for years, with a freshness to every dish here, a lightness of touch, and a true understanding of the art of acidity. Same reproduction, same treatment.4
• Heidi Lauth Beasley, The Infatuation, 2 August 2024, 9.3 out of 10: Charm, inclusivity, and the best Korean food in London is just part of the DNA at Miga. On the prawns: The gochujang sauce is a shouter, both in flavour and in your inevitable reaction.1
• Helen Graham, formerly head chef at Bubala, asked where she eats, in la grappe's seven-chef piece of 19 February 2026: Korean food with French style execution. It's family run, the dad is the chef and the love and pride amongst the team really shines through. I always leave with such a full heart.6
• Jeremy Lee, chef-patron of Quo Vadis in Soho (August 2025), counts Miga among the four restaurants he names as his favorites in London, and calls it a newer discovery. His line on the kitchen is The cooking is a revelation. He orders differently from the critics: the raw fish salads delicately dressed with chili and citrus, which he rates among the best I've ever had, and the mung bean pancakes, crisp-edged and earthy, then the poached beef in broth and a noodle bowl.7
• Time Out, 20 May 2025, naming it the best restaurant in London for 2025. Food & Drink Editor Leonie Cooper's line, as reported: Miga is all about exhilarating dishes that smash your tastebuds with integrity and panache.2

Good to know

• Where: 3 Mare Street, E8 4RP, on the corner at Cambridge Heath. Hot Dinners published 1 Mare St in 2024; the hygiene register and both Time Out and The Infatuation say 3, and that is what this entry carries.
• Booking: essential, through SevenRooms. Time Out's advice if you have not got one: "turn up for lunch when walk-ins are more likely."
• Hours: not established. The restaurant has no website and no source reached in this pass publishes its days or service times. Check before you travel.
• Menus: lunch and dinner are different.
• Hygiene: FSA rating 3, Hackney, inspected 30 March 2025, FHRSID 1764272. A 3 reads generally satisfactory, and it is worth knowing under an award list this long.8
• Sites: one restaurant. The family also runs "Miga Korean Fusion", a takeaway at 42 Aberconway Road in Morden, which is a separate business with its own hygiene record and is not this room.
• Sourcing note: the Famurewa and Parker Bowles quotes come from Harden's reproduction of both reviews, which carries their bylines and publication dates. Neither original page was reached, and the Daily Mail is not one of the sources this site accepts on its own.

Verdict

must-visit — Build the evening around it, and book weeks out. Time Out's critics made this the number one restaurant in London for 2025, out of fifty. The Infatuation scored it 9.3, which is their top band. Michelin gave it a Bib Gourmand in 2025. And two national critics filed raves eighteen months apart, which is the part that settles it: Jimi Famurewa in the Standard in August 2024 wrote that it "may be one of the best places I have eaten at this year. They talk a good game here. But, holy cow, do they back it up", and Tom Parker Bowles in March 2026 called it "the most thrilling Korean food I've eaten for years". Both of them ended up writing about the same plain white bowl of ox-bone broth, and Parker Bowles said he would cross town for that alone. The proposition underneath the accolades is a father cooking in an open steel kitchen with his two sons on the floor, a family that came out of New Malden with the history painted on the outside of the building, at Bib money. Helen Graham, who ran the kitchen at Bubala, reads it as Korean food with French execution and says she always leaves with a full heart. The room does not shout, the food does, and the only thing standing between you and it is the booking.