Kimchimama

Kimchimama does a kimchi jjigae that’ll sort out your sinuses—we know, because it once cured our cold. The Korean spot is tucked down a pretty street in Pimlico, but it’s not somewhere you come for a long, lingering lunch. Orders are tapped into a self-service screen and moments later you hear your choices shouted around the kitchen and the ferocious sizzling—still audible over the loud, up-tempo pop music—begins. There’s a total of five tables in the stripped-back dining room and most people choose to take their food away. Wherever you eat it, the spicy jjigae broth, with strips of fatty pork and silky blocks of tofu, is our go-to. The mandu dumplings stuffed with minced pork and fiery ginger should be ordered like Matthew McConaughey’s martinis in The Wolf of Wall Street—two, then precisely seven, and two more. And then, two more every five minutes until you pass out.

photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch

photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch

photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch