After being in London for a couple of weeks, I met a group of cool Asian working professions during a meetup group. We decided to meet up again for dinner on a Friday night, and one of the guys chose Assa - Korean Hot Pot in Soho, because he had tried it before.

We decided to meet at 6:30 in front of the restaurant. I arrived to the restaurant on time and one of the guys were there already but we had to wait for another 2 to arrive. There was a huge queue in front of the restaurant but it was Friday night so what was I thinking. After queuing for awhile, the restaurant staff didn't allow us to enter the restaurant yet even though we were in front of the queue, that was because we didn't have our full party yet. It was the first time I've ever heard this rule before but the staff was extremely polite about it so I guess it wasn't a big problem to me.

We manage to get into the restaurant at 7 p.m. and we ordered a chicken and mushroom hot pot due to one of our friend doesn't eat much spicy food. We ordered some tofu, pork belly slices, beef, vegetables for extra toppings for our hot pot. The food came pretty quickly which is always a relief. With our hot pot not being very spicy, we asked the waiter for some sauces, although she gave us a funny look, but she managed to give us some hot sauce and soy sauce in the end. I have to say the hot pot tasted much better with a dip of hot sauce.


There were a lot of customers there, so it had a busy vibrant atmosphere there, and the restaurant was playing some cool current Korean pop music which I liked. You can tell the restaurant has been in business for quite sometime as everything weren't too modernized, but nevertheless it was a comfy environment. The downside was that the restaurant was quite packed as they want more customers to be seated and it became a bit too noisy and it was hard to hear what my friends were saying when all we wanted to do was to have some nice food and talk about life on a Friday night.

At the end of the meal, all we ordered was the hot pot, we weren't fully full but it was a good amount of food just enough for a dessert somewhere else. I was quite surprise in terms of the bill, it averaged out to be £13.20 per person which is quite cheap for a place to eat in London. Now I realize why there's been a queue in the first place as it is a very popular destination for students. I would love to come here again and maybe try out the food instead of the hot pot.

Ratings: 6.5/10