There was a piece in the US foodie press recently suggesting that New York was getting bored with the trend for no reservations in restaurants. Well, put out the bunting and pop the party poppers: this is the sweetest of music to my ears. It’s not that I’m a precious, overindulged restaurant critic, it’s that I’m neurotic: the idea that I might not make it into dinner sends me into a panic. I also don’t do spontaneity, much as I’d love to: I don’t live anywhere near 99.9% of the restaurants I review. Where New York leads, London – and the rest of the UK – frequently follows. All digits crossed for an end to standing in line with a gazillion twenty-somethings whose circulation clearly works better than mine.
Yet here I am again, in a place that doesn’t take bookings, where the music is deafening and you’re likely to teeter back out into the night fragranced with smoke (not, weirdly, from the barbecue). Despite turning up ludicrously early, all the nicest tables at the front are reserved. I thought you didn’t take bookings? “Sorry, madam,” says the charming manager. “We’re keeping those for the press.” As ever, I’m undercover and have to keep shtum.
The alternative is a tiny, gloomy room at the back, so we end up at the bar. I quite like eating at bars, pretending I’m in Bushwick, but to navigate these stools you need legs like Alek Wek’s to avoid looking like a hippo rogering a crane. We’re welcomed with one of my favourite things, the mansplaining of “the concept”: Mexican Korean BBQ, should you wonder, and once you’ve finished wondering, should you fancy having a bit of a sneer. So why do I report back on Bó Drake with sunny bonhomie, happy to go back tomorrow, happy to recommend; in fact, just generally happy?
The answer, mostly, is ribs. Beautiful ribs. Ribs are one of those dishes that people mistakenly regard as easy trash food, having endured horrible versions in pubs and chains, the meat sweaty and flopping exhaustedly from the bones, the connecting tissue strained and shiny, the sauce like something coughed up by a Haribo-addicted pipe smoker. Good ribs aren’t easy to do: they require time, skill, TLC and excellent produce. Bó Drake’s tick all of these boxes: long wands of bone amply padded with pink-ringed meat; you need your teeth to tear it away from the bone, but there’s smoky tenderness once you do. They’re just sticky enough, gently sweet with Korean pear (those crisp, elegant creatures also known as nashi), lightly scattered with toasted sesame and tendrils of green chilli.
The folk behind Bó Drake include ex-Roka, Scottish-Chinese Jan Lee, and the joint shares with Roka a feel for meat and big flavours. Perhaps our bar perch leads us to order eccentrically, almost dish by dish, but I’d argue this is the best way to experience the place; to use it like a less draughty version of Seoul’s pojangmacha (plastic drinking tents) or LA’s Korean-Mexican food trucks. The holy trinity of salt and fat and sweet pairs beautifully with booze, even if my sorta-negroni – in a tiny Kilner jar with an infuriating, golf-ball-shaped ice cube, the kind that always end up banging me on the nose – is little more than a couple of oversweet thimblefuls; daft name, too. Bó Drake marmelade – purlease. I should have stuck to the soju, theatrically zhuzhed up with a Professor Branestawm-worthy smoker that wreathes us in clouds of bamboo smoke.
So we order appetisers (“smalls”, ugh): quesadillas stuffed with gooey cheese and some fine, fruity, home-fermented kimchi. These come with a deceptively cooling chipotle cream with a ballsy after-kick. There are taro crisps with an uninspiring habanero-avocado dip, a bit Old El Paso for my liking. Vegetables don’t miss out on the fusiony treatment: asparagus roasted with soy and yuzu; cauliflower, fried, with the earthy thrum of mushroom puree and red cabbage, and topped with translucent crisps of lotus root: good, but a tiny serving for a fiver.
I’d prop up the bar for hours on a promise of the brisket bao: a thinner, toastier version of the fashionable Taiwan-style buns, stuffed with slow-smoked beef, thinly-sliced pickle, frilly onion rings, a mustardy sauce – a Big Mac for the beardy generation. Perhaps the bar is the right place to be, after all – table bookings be damned. This is unashamedly drinking food. Works for me.
• Bó Drake 6 Greek Street, London W1, 020-7439 9989. Open Tues-Sat, 6-11pm. About £40 a head, including drinks and service.
Food 7/10
Atmosphere 6/10
Value for money 7/10
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