Kiji London: The culinary force behind North America’s top-ranked restaurant opens an elite Korean BBQ experience in London’s most expensive neighborhood.
The architects of Atomix, the Korean restaurant that claimed the top spot on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list for 2025, have quietly opened Kiji London, their first international venture, in Mayfair. Kiji represents a calculated move into territory where tableside grilling and Michelin-standard precision command premium prices without apology.
The restaurant embodies a particular philosophy about Korean dining that Atomix perfected in Manhattan: stripping away novelty signaling and instead doubling down on ritual, ingredient integrity, and the theater of the grill itself. Kiji isn’t positioned as an exotic export or a fusion play softened for British palates. It’s Korean barbecue at the level of technical mastery and ingredient sourcing that earned Atomix its ranking, transplanted into a Mayfair address where fine dining still trades in discretion and six-figure wine lists. The space itself signals this positioning, elegant restraint rather than design spectacle, with the emphasis on what lands on the table and how it’s prepared in front of you.
Kiji London arrives not as a restaurant trying to prove something about Korean cuisine, but as the continuation of a project that has already been crowned. The opening marks a fundamental shift in how top-tier Korean dining is understood globally, with Kiji London operating from a position of established excellence rather than emerging trend.
