Tucked away at the back of a tiny supermarket in South Hampstead, you can find a five-table restaurant serving home-cooked Korean meals. To reach Your Mum’s Kitchen, diners walk through the aisles of SK Mart and head down into a compact, hidden basement dining room.
As the name of the restaurant suggests, inside the small space diners can watch their meals being prepared by head chef aka “Mum” Mi Ja Hong, who runs the open kitchen, while her son waits tables. The family-run joint lives up to its name, offering a menu of traditional Korean staples cooked right in front of the guests.
Affordable home-style menu
The menu features hearty dishes priced accessibly between £5 and £13. The kitchen serves warming bowls of tteokbokki and kimchi stews, alongside seafood pajeon—a golden-brown savoury pancake cooked crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Another staple is the sogogi bibimbap, which mixes spicy, savoury, and sweet flavours over beef, rice, and vegetables.
For dessert, diners can order bingsoo, a traditional Korean shaved ice treat. The restaurant offers variations ranging from mango to matcha red bean, finished with a drizzle of sweet condensed milk.
The hidden dining room operates as a quiet local fixture for affordable cooking, maintaining the atmosphere of eating in someone’s home directly behind the neighbourhood grocery shelves.
The kitchen is open every day, apart from Wednesdays, and has varying opening times, which you can find on their Instagram, so plan accordingly.
📍 Your Mum’s Kitchen, 17 Goldhurst Terrace, NW6 3HX
🚇 The nearest station is Finchley Road
