Miga

Miga is one of the most celebrated restaurant openings in London in 2024 -- a family-run modern Korean kitchen on Mare Street in Hackney that Time Out has called "London's most acclaimed new restaurant" and that holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. The name means "flavourful house" in Korean, and the restaurant more than lives up to its name: a quiet, unassuming whitewashed space on Mare Street, steps from Regent's Canal, where the father commands the open kitchen with quiet mastery while his sons bring warmth and charm to the front of house.

The family's culinary story begins in 1970s Seoul, where the grandmother became renowned for her ox bone broth. Her son trained with Japanese master chefs in the 1990s before opening a restaurant in New Malden. Now his sons have brought the family legacy to Hackney, producing modern Korean dishes of exceptional depth and finesse. Signature dishes include yughwe (beef tartare with skinny batons of Korean pear and gleaming egg yolk -- "so incandescently sweet it's less like raw meat and more like a fruity cocktail"); galbijjim (soy-braised short ribs with pear and shiitake, falling off the bone); maeun saeu (gochujang prawns); and seolleongtang (the family's grandmother's ox bone broth, served with rare brisket). BYOB. Book well ahead; lunch walk-ins often possible.