A Michelin-Starred Restaurant From Seoul Uproots to Manhattan’s Koreatown (2024)

New York City is still fertile ground for the modern Korean fine dining scene, as Joo Ok, a Michelin-starred tasting menu restaurant and the newest brand in the Hand Hospitality portfolio, has uprooted from Seoul and has made a new home at 22 West 32nd Street, between Broadway and Fifth Avenue, on the 16th floor, in Manhattan’s Koreatown. It is scheduled to open on Tuesday, September 3.

Joo Ok joins a number of New York restaurants with siblings in Korea: Jungsik, Yoon Haeundae Galbi, the fast-casual Bonchon, and Paris Baguette franchises. Hand Hospitality is also in on importing Korean concepts to New York, having ferried over Sam Woo Jung, Okdongsik, and Hojokban.

Back in Korea, Chang-ho Shin, chef and owner of Joo Ok, was flying high, racking up awards from Michelin to Asia’s 50 Best since opening his restaurant in 2016, but he got to a point where “I needed to be challenged more,” he said. So he moved to New York City, but there was a problem: He could no longer access the farmlands that grew his ingredients. Plus, he’s trying to help convert Koreatown, a major destination for casual and late-night eats, into one for fine dining.

Shin says he’s up for the challenge and has a game plan.

Joo Ok

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He’s not coming empty-handed. He relocated his core team, including a manager, sous chef, line cook, and their families. The thought of splitting up the team among two Joo Ok locations had influenced his decision to close down the original. Regarding his repertoire of ingredients, the steadfast farm-to-table chef has brought doenjang (soybean paste), soy sauce, tangerine and acacia preserves, along with items like bonnet bellflower liquor that he cultivated and fermented himself.

Joo Ok

He’s literally growing new roots here, too. The most thrilling import is Shin’s sustainability-focused, farm-to-table approach to Korean produce. Seated inside Hand Hospitality’s office in Koreatown, he said that the restaurant group — which includes Junghyun Park (Atomix), Hoyoung Kim (Moono), and Dongsik Ok (Okdongsik) — is managing two acres of land at an upstate farm.

Shin is planning to grow Korean staples: shepherd’s purse (naengi), wild chive (dalleh), daylily (wonchuri), soybeans, peppers, and perilla seeds. In Korea, he used different parts of the plants throughout their growth cycle, from young shoots to older fronds of leafy greens. When fruits reach a certain toughness, he grinds them. He plans to do the same here.

“I want to learn how they grow in their new terroir,” he said. “I’m most excited about that.”

He’s already learned that pine nuts, for instance, have a different flavor here: more pungent and less sweet than those growing in Korea.

What does this mean for the food at Joo Ok in New York? Shin is reengineering all his recipes to consider the different flavors and textures of his produce grown upstate.

For instance, he’s recalibrating the proportions of each ingredient in his lobster dish (Jat Jeup Chae 잣즙채). He has pressed freshly picked, locally grown pine nuts into a creamy sauce, tossed with lightly poached lobster and fresh Korean pear.

Shin still plans to take on the labor- and time-intensive operations of fermenting foods like kimchi, soy sauce, and doenjang, the latter two of which are rarely made in-house.

Joo Ok

He has spun the challenging Koreatown location into an asset, too. He kept the gritty entryway of the 1913-constructed building as part of the experience, from the cement walls to the operator-run elevator with a hand crank and a metal gate. Take it up to the 16th floor, and enter a tranquil vestibule with soft sunlight shining down from a skylight and a 200-year-old pine tree trunk from Korea that he says emanates good energy into the space.

The interiors are the work of Two Point Zero, the design studio behind vibe-heavy stunners like Moono, Kisa, and Nowon Bushwick. They obliterated all signs of an office with elements of a hanok, a traditional Korean house from the 14th century. Through the 40-seat restaurant, square patterns repeat themselves in wood and jade — “joo ok” stands for “house” and “jewel,” after all — including window cut-outs that look out into the Empire State Building and sprawling midtown Manhattan.

“Even walking down these streets is new for me,” Shin said. That’s why everything — every single little detail from the farm, the ingredients, the space — is exciting. I want to grow and learn and surprise our guests with what we can bring them.”

Caroline Shin is a Queens-raised food journalist and founder of the Cooking with Granny YouTube and workshop series starring immigrant grandmothers. Follow her on Instagram @CookingWGranny.