darling diners

MISSION STATEMENT: As a Book club for 4 years we found we’d spend more time talking about the goings on of our lives in Wimbledon than the books we had read, hence the birth of the Darling Diners. Living in Wimbledon gives you access to so many fantastic restaurants and the Darling Diners aim is to try a diversity of eateries, enjoy each other’s company, get out and about and have fun.

VENUE: SU LA Korean Restaurant, 79-81 Kingston Road, New Malden.
Tel 020 8366-0121

You may think that we chose to dine Korean after Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s recent controversial statement that puppy meat is no worse than a pork chop! But I can assure you, we were not interested in finding that out for ourselves! The reason we went to try Korean food is because one doesn’t need to venture very far from Wimbledon to get an authentic taste of Korea. New Malden happens to have the highest population of Koreans in Europe.  I’d never had Korean food before and neither had my other Darling Diners so we were really launching ourselves into the culinary unknown (as well as the geographically unknown environs of New Malden!).  Su La is a small, unassuming backstreet Korean restaurant and I’d read a good review of it in The Week Magazine. My two fellow Darling Diners happen to be Americans so upon suggesting Korean, I half expected Dana and Cynthia to launch into song with “Suicide is Painless” and show up in M.A.S.H style army fatigues. 

Our friendly waitress (I think her father is the chef) helped us order an array of traditional Korean dishes such as Yang-nyum-gal-bi (vegetable pancake fritters) and kot-deung-shim (stone bowl rice and vegetable with egg) all new flavours and textures on our palate! The toasted dumplings were delicious, accompanied by the griddle assortment which came with lots of little side dishes and dips to experiment with. Two mainstays of Korean food are: Kim-chi (spicy seasoned bean sprouts) and garlic – lots of it.  We ordered the BBQ meats which were cooked in front of us on a grill in the centre of the table.  The sirloin was cut up into bite size pieces with a pair of scissors as it sizzled and then served with lettuce leaf wraps.  The BBQ beef ribs were especially tasty. We also ordered a seafood noodle soup which I was not so keen on.

One could certainly go to Su La and be a lot more adventurous than we were with the food and try some of their traditional dishes such as the spicy ox tripe or black pudding soup washed down with a glass of ginseng and herb folk wine! However, we highly enjoyed our more ‘conservative’ selection of Korean dishes washed down with green tea and left fully satiated at £22 a head!

Food: 5 star
Atmosphere: 3 star
Value for money: 5 star

Mary Hanover is an ex-TV producer and lives in Wimbledon. She is married with 3 children.