Sollip

Where Korean and European Traditions Meet in Bermondsey

London's high-end restaurant scene has long been anchored by the French-trained modern European consensus: the tasting menu format, the classical sauce work, the brigade hierarchy. What has shifted over the past decade is the arrival of a smaller cohort of restaurants that apply that same technical rigour to non-European culinary traditions, producing cooking that sits in neither category cleanly. Sollip, operating from a compact room on Melior Street in SE1 since its opening, belongs to that cohort. It holds a Michelin star (awarded 2024), ranked 306th in the Opinionated About Dining Leading Restaurants in Europe list for 2025 (up from 266th in 2024), and received an OAD Highly Recommended listing for Leading New Restaurants in Europe in 2023. Those are the credentials of a restaurant that has earned its place in a peer set that includes technically demanding tasting-menu operations across the continent.

The Bermondsey address is worth noting in context. SE1 is not where London's established fine-dining geography tends to cluster. The concentration of Michelin-starred restaurants in London runs through Mayfair, Knightsbridge, and Chelsea, where venues like CORE by Clare Smyth, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, Sketch, The Lecture Room and Library, The Ledbury, and Dinner by Heston Blumenthal operate within a familiar postcode logic. Sollip's south-of-the-river positioning is, in practice, a signal about what kind of restaurant it is: a destination that draws on neighbourhood calm rather than neighbourhood prestige, and that competes on the plate rather than on address.

The Banchan Philosophy in a Tasting Menu Format

Korean dining has a structural concept that does not translate easily into western fine-dining conventions: the banchan table, where the meal is constituted not by a single protagonist dish but by an array of small preparations that surround, complement, and reframe each other. Each element has its own seasoning logic, its own temperature, its own fermentation stage. The meal is relational rather than linear. That philosophy of accompaniment and variety, the idea that no single dish should dominate but that each should add something distinct to the composition as a whole, sits behind the cooking at Sollip even when the format is a European-style set menu.

The set menu at Sollip has been described, in Michelin's own assessment, as imaginative and impeccably executed. Individual dishes that have appeared on the menu illustrate the cross-referencing at work: a reimagining of tarte Tatin using daikon in place of apple; courgette flower stuffed with crab and dubu (Korean tofu); pork with wild garlic; and a dessert of ssuk pain perdu, where the French eggy-bread technique is applied to a preparation using ssuk, the Korean mugwort. These are not fusion gestures. They are the product of training across Europe's serious kitchens meeting fluency in Korean ingredient logic, with neither tradition made subservient to the other. The result is a menu that operates by a banchan-adjacent principle: each course distinct, each one in conversation with the others, no single dish reducible to a single culinary tradition.

The Room and the Operating Format

The dining room at Sollip operates in pastel shades, and the atmosphere Michelin identifies is one of calmness and tranquillity, a deliberate contrast to the bustle of Borough and Bermondsey outside. This is a conscious design choice that mirrors the cooking's logic: restraint as a form of precision, quiet as a condition for attention. The space is compact, reinforcing the low-volume, high-attention model that characterises the serious end of the tasting-menu category globally. Compare the format to the large-scale operations of multi-room restaurants in the ££££ tier and Sollip reads as a specialist format where every cover is a considered transaction.

Operating schedule is narrow: Wednesday to Thursday evenings only, with Friday and Saturday extending to include a lunch service. The restaurant is closed Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. This four-day structure is common among restaurants operating a single tasting menu with a small kitchen team at consistent quality. It is not a limitation; it is a statement about the model. Diners planning around Sollip should treat the Wednesday or Thursday evening slots as the most schedule-constrained options, with Friday and Saturday lunch offering the same menu in a marginally more accessible window.

Where Sollip Sits in the Broader Field

Korean fine-dining conversation in London has developed a genuine depth over the past few years, though it remains a niche tier relative to the wider modern European field. The relevant peer comparison for Sollip is not its immediate Bermondsey neighbours but the small number of Korean-rooted tasting-menu restaurants operating at Michelin level internationally. In New York, Atomix occupies the upper end of that category, with two Michelin stars and a format that also draws on the banchan structure as a conceptual frame for its progression of small courses. Sollip's single star and OAD ranking place it in the same serious tier, if at a different position on the recognition ladder.

Within London's own starred field, the relevant frame is the broader category of chef-driven tasting-menu restaurants at the ££££ price point where technical ambition drives the offer. That group includes operations as different in tradition as CORE by Clare Smyth, rooted in classical British produce, and Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, which works from historical British culinary records. Sollip's distinction within that peer set is that it operates without a stable canonical tradition to anchor to: the cooking is the synthesis, and the synthesis is the point.

For diners who want to understand the wider UK fine-dining ecosystem, the country's serious restaurant operations extend well beyond London. The Fat Duck in Bray, L'Enclume in Cartmel, Moor Hall in Aughton, Gidleigh Park in Chagford, Hand and Flowers in Marlow, and Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Great Milton each anchor a different regional and stylistic identity. For the international comparison set, Le Bernardin in New York City represents the classical European-trained fine-dining pole against which technically ambitious restaurants like Sollip implicitly position themselves.

Planning Your Visit

Sollip operates at Unit 1, 8 Melior Street, London SE1 3QP, a short walk from London Bridge station. The price tier is ££££, consistent with the starred tasting-menu category in London. Service runs Wednesday and Thursday from 6 PM to 11 PM; Friday and Saturday from 12 PM to 3 PM and 6 PM to 11:30 PM. Google reviewers rate the restaurant 4.7 from 300 reviews, a signal of consistent execution across a meaningful sample. The restaurant's OAD ranking has moved upward from 266th in 2024 to 306th in 2025 within the Leading Restaurants in Europe list, which reflects a changing field rather than a decline in quality: the OAD list is a large and volatile ranking. The Michelin star, retained into the current edition, is the more stable credential.

Diners staying in London or planning a broader itinerary can reference EP Club's guides for accommodation, drinking, and further dining: our full London hotels guide, our full London bars guide, our full London wineries guide, and our full London experiences guide. The full picture of London's restaurant scene, across all tiers and cuisines, is covered in our full London restaurants guide.

Quick reference: Sollip, Unit 1, 8 Melior St, London SE1 3QP. Wed–Thu 6 PM–11 PM; Fri–Sat lunch 12 PM–3 PM and dinner 6 PM–11:30 PM. Michelin one star (2024). ££££.