Where to Find Every Kind of Korean Food in New York

For Fun, Easygoing Hangs With a Crew

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For carefree vibes, let loose at 8282, where the menu is divided into creative versions of anju (Korean drinking foods) and banju (larger shared dishes) that mix up global accents but lean heavily into Korean flavors. That playfulness, no doubt inspired by married co-owners, manager Jee Kim and chef Bong Le Jo, shows itself in hits like the herbal and savory perilla pasta (angel hair pasta tossed with crab meat and topped with perilla oil and sesame seed crumbs); littleneck sujebi (hand-torn pieces of potato-based noodles topped with littleneck clams in a butter scallion pepper broth); and an ibérico pork galbi so tender it can be mistaken for beef. Pair these with a gochujang margarita or a pandan soju, and you’re set.

It might be the trendy newcomer, but Kisa’s crowning achievement is that it’s a proven hit that hearkens back to an old-school and more personal, homey style of Korean dining. Kisa’s bulgogi, jeyook bokkeum (spicy stir-fried pork), acorn jelly, beef jeon, and gamjatang (spicy pork bone soup) — and its eye-catching signage in all Korean words, in the Lower East Side, no less — mark just how far the popularity of Korean restaurants has evolved in New York. The dinner sets ($32), featuring rice, a main, soup, and a variety of banchan, stand out for their affordability, and ease in making just one choice at the restaurant.

Insa fills the gap for Korean barbecue in Brooklyn, and with some very Brooklyn twists, including its noraebang (karaoke), its cocktail program, and its selection of natural wines. The barbecue includes banchan, lettuce, and condiments with a choice of five grilled mains, ranging from galbi to seasoned Gulf shrimp, assorted mushrooms, and a house-cured pancetta with gochugaru, garlic, and black pepper. If you want to keep the party going, head to one of the karaoke rooms that can fit up to 22 guests, and throw back some sool and cocktails made with gin and kimchi juice. If all the singing gets you hungry again, snack on some candied anchovies or dumplings. This spot comes from chef-owner Sohui Kim, who’s also behind Gage & Tollner and The Sunken Harbor Club.

At this outpost of one of Seoul’s much-loved bulgogi specialists, the chefs have perfected a compact menu of expertly executed traditional Korean dishes. Samwoojung prepares their bulgogi in an old-fashioned preparation rarely seen in New York: The beef is cooked in a broth of glass noodles, tteok, and carrots. Soy sauce crab has depths of flavor that complement the umami of the seaweed rice. Kimchi noodles comprise a tangle of thin wheat noodles in a tangy, icy radish kimchi and beef broth topped with napa cabbage kimchi and beef brisket. Also, don’t skip dessert: icy and partially dried persimmon with Korean honey and ricotta cheese.

For Unforgettable Tasting Menus

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Atoboy is a cultural marker in the modern Korean dining scene. Opened in 2016, it was applauded for its creative, fusion-driven approach to Korean banchan that chef-owner Junghyun Park gleaned from his years at Jungsik — all inside a casual, industrially designed space. Atoboy offers a $75 four-course prix fixe, and the menu veers toward the experimental, with plenty of global ingredients. For example: A mix of Cavaillon melon slices, Jimmy Nardello peppers, and Castelvetrano olives sit atop labneh. Deep-fried blowfish tails get drizzled with doenjang caramel. If you can’t snag a reservation, rest assured that the bar takes walk-ins with access to the full menu. Atoboy is the precursor to Park’s wildly successful, critically acclaimed fine-dining venture, Atomix, as well as popular spots Seoul Salon and Naro.

So far, every project chef-owner Sungchul Shim has launched has become a hit, and it all started with Kochi. His Michelin-starred take on Korean skewers, or kochi, is bold and elaborate. His octopus twigim (battered and fried octopus leg) is slicked with a caramelized sauce, and topped with slivers of celtuce and radish, wisps of fried potato, and a lovely green perilla aioli. The $145 tasting menu plays out in a loud and casual taverna-style setting, and welcomes boisterous conversations among friends, while the chef’s counter gives you a front-row seat to the careful orchestration of simultaneous searing, blowtorching, dabbing, and tweezing of magnificent dishes in a narrow space. Despite his other projects (Mari, Mari.Ne Handroll, Don Don, and soon, Gui), you’ll still often see Shim stepping into the kitchen.

Chef-owner Chang-ho Shin relocated the entire core team of his Michelin-starred Joo Ok from Seoul to New York this summer in an ambitious drive to embrace challenges, and a whole new city. Possibly his toughest challenge was to transport his farm-to-table approach to indigenous Korean ingredients. But he’s certainly up for it, with several farming and fermenting projects in the works in upstate New York. You can enjoy the fruits of his harvests in his 11-course tasting menu ($180), where close attention is paid to the seasonings in each and every dish: Do look for Shin’s signature cold-pressed perilla seed oil that flavors the shrimp and geoduck, or the delicate pine nut cream sauce with the poached lobster.

Ddobar is worth the trek to Olly Olly Market in far-west Chelsea. Here, chef-owner Jiho Kim delivers a very inventive, fine dining take on yubu chobap, an on-the-go childhood snack of delicious, hand-held parcels of vinegared rice and assorted toppings inside tofu wrappers. His 13-course tasting menu ($75) runs through the world with yubu tarts such as cacio e pepe with egg yolk and parmesan cheese; duck pastrami with rillettes; and gochujang chicken with parmesan. New Yorkers, especially, will appreciate the salmon dappled with an everything bagel seasoning of white and black sesame seeds, onion, and garlic flakes.

Where else can you try soy sauce that’s been aged for 120 years? This eight-seat hideout in the back of Long Island City’s Little Banchan Shop is chef-owner Hooni Kim’s master class on Korean fermentation. After opening ground-breaking Danji and Hanjan in Manhattan, Kim developed a gluten allergy and focused on organic ingredients. You’ll learn about his personal journey and plenty more during the progression of this seven-course tasting menu. Kim often throws in extra dishes, too, and all of them incorporate super traditional, anti-mass-production techniques. The doenjang chige is made from meju (a brick of fermented soybean paste) and freshly made tofu. A 14-month fermented kimchi gets braised with Snake River Farms heritage pork belly.

For Koreatown Classics in Manhattan and Queens

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The residential community of Queens’ Koreatown — which runs from Flushing to Long Island with Mokja Golmok (Food Alley) located in Murray Hill — shows a world of Korean barbecue that goes way beyond bulgogi. And at Yuk Jun Gui, the calling card is the fresh eel grilled over charcoal. It’s a rare dish that requires finesse with handling eel and hurdles in procuring live fish (it has to be eaten fresh, according to Korean custom). An order of it at Yuk Jun Gui ($40) presents soft, succulent, buoyant meat with a smoky char and all the fixings, like lettuce wraps, ssamjang, and sesame oil with salt flakes and pepper for flavoring the meat, as well as a full spread of complimentary banchan like bubbling egg soufflé, seasoned zucchini, and pickled peppers. For more flame-kissed delights, check out the galbi, pork belly, and intestines. This is the sort of cozy neighborhood spot where an ajumma (Korean auntie) is always a fixture, and she serves, grills, and sweetly offers dalgona candies to little kids.

Call (718) 460-1266 to make a reservation.

Consistency is a challenge for any restaurant day to day, so it’s no small feat that New Wonjo (formerly Wonjo) has kept going with the same flavors and vibe since 1993, even as Koreatown has changed and diversified around it. It’s held onto all the hallmarks of an old-school Koreatown joint: charcoal barbecue, cherrywood chairs, tables outfitted with grills, lunch deals, and a menu as long as a CVS receipt of tried-and-true Korean dishes. That means galbi tang, tteokguk, budae jjigae, and daegu maeuntang, in addition to barbecue staples — all with an array of complimentary banchan. Today, the kitchen closes at 4 a.m. although it used to run 24/7 for a good chunk of tipsy, hungry folks who happened to stumble in after a very eventful night out.

Soondubu is the quintessential soup for the Korean soul, and SoGongDong gets it just right. This family-friendly neighborhood spot offers 14 versions ($16 to $20), like perilla seed or kimchi with a choice of spice level and noodles (ramyeon or kalguksu). They all arrive bubbling in the traditional black earthenware pot — make sure to crack in that egg as soon they do, so it can cook — and they all boast a depth of flavor that brings out the subtle, slightly sour, and nutty flavor of tofu. The rice also comes in the classic black pot, not just for eating throughout the meal, but to make nurungji (scorched rice) with it afterwards. When you’ve finished with your rice, servers will pour over hot barley tea to make a nurungji that might just bring back childhood memories of fighting your siblings for more of the crisped rice. A lovely complimentary assortment of banchan completes this super traditional meal.

Call (718) 799-0777 to make a reservation.

Walk into Pocha 32, and you know you’re in for a raucous, soju-filled night with lots of great, sizzling food. Green netting and fairy lights hang from the ceiling — a 2000’s-era New York City incarnation of Seoul’s pojangmacha: makeshift, street-side bars where K-drama protagonists often drown their sorrows. The calling card here is the spectacular watermelon sawa — ice, fruit purée, soju, and Sprite inside a hollowed-out watermelon that’s served with bowls and a ladle. But the food, all served family style, per Korean custom, brings the fun, too. Get the anju classics like chunky haemul jeon, saucy tteokbokki, whole grilled squid, and budae jjigae.

For Date Night

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Ever go to a steakhouse and want to try every cut on the menu? Cote allows for just this. Proprietor Simon Kim’s spot masterfully combines American steakhouse and Korean barbecue concepts: banquettes, beef cuts that are thicker than traditional Korean ones, and an 800-selection wine list. The key offering is the Butcher’s Feast, which includes flatiron and hanger steak, marinated galbi, and dry-aged ribeye alongside traditional banchan like egg soufflé and seasoned perilla leaves. You can also order customary KBBQ sides like doenjang jjigae and kimchi jjigae as extra add-ins. Head downstairs to the dimly lit, plant-filled bar and lounge, Undercote, for cocktails.

Moono is the destination du jour for impeccably executed traditional Korean food in a stunning venue from chef Hoyoung Kim, who’s also behind Michelin-starred tasting menu spot Jua. Moono is Jua’s more casual, à la carte sibling restaurant, where Kim digs deep into Korean tradition. The rare-in-New-York Pyongyang cold noodle soup stays true to its delicate flavor (despite protests from first-timers who may only be used to the South Korean version). Dishes like the acorn jelly, mushroom sotbap, and soondae (blood sausage) hit home for Korean diners. Kim puts his own spin on traditional dishes, too. For his versions of hoe muchim, he seasons raw yellowtail in a gochujang sauce and tops it with savory soybean powder that gets wrapped in a layer of crispy seaweed. It’s a wonderful juxtaposition of texture and flavor. And the galbi jjim is a deeply satisfying medley of braised prime beef, Pyogo mushroom, tteok, and shishito peppers.

No one does sool quite like Hana Makgeolli does it. It’s a brewery and restaurant dedicated to the small-batch production of Korean alcohol made the old-fashioned way with organic rice and nuruk, a wild fermentation starter that’s pretty much been eliminated by mass-produced beverage companies. Makgeolli, a milky, unfiltered rice wine, is the core product, but the portfolio has expanded to takju, yakju, and soju. Their in-house food often gets overlooked in favor of sool, but know that it’s wonderful. Plus, the space hosts an ever-changing lineup of pop-ups with chefs from all over the world — from QU Fermentation Lab in Berlin and L.A.’s Soban with its renowned soy sauce fermented crab, to D.C.’s Magpie and the Tiger with its signature rolled-up chip of fried cheese topped with kimchi. All this goodness is directed by owner and brewer-in-chief Alice Jun, who grew up toddling beside her dad’s home brews.

For Specific Cravings

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In 2018, Yoon Haeundae, a Korean barbecue house first established in 1964 in Haeundae, Busan, opened its New York City offshoot and it’s been claiming fans ever since. The upscale Korean barbecue experience sits in an elegant space with a massive beverage program that includes flights of soju, chungju (clarified makgeolli) and makgeolli, as well as wines and cocktails. Its signature galbi features shallow, parallel incisions on the surface for maximum tenderness, marination, and charring. The prime package ($156) includes brisket, Wagyu short ribs, and dry-aged ribeye with dips like pineapple garlic sauce, meat jus, and sesame and chile-infused salt (the lettuce here costs an extra $7). Opt for the potato noodle ($9), which gets cooked in a broth in the circumference of the grill pan. It does twists on traditional dishes, too. The yukhoe (typically a slightly saucy beef tartare with Asian pear) is served with an icy beef broth poured over.

Named after the valiant free-diving seafood-foraging women of Jeju Island, Haenyeo brings a seafood focus — with chef-owner Jenny Kwak’s touches — to residential Park Slope. It ranges from the unexpected appearance of traditional (not mainstream) Korean seafood dishes like the daegu jorim (spicy braised codfish); spicy squid bibimbap; and haemul japtang, a chile-infused bouillabaisse loaded with shellfish. Kwak’s creative flexes appear in the grilled Spanish mackerel, which you wrap in squares of toasted seaweed, and Wellfleet oysters that get grilled with savory seaweed butter. To round out the seafood, be sure to order their hit tteokbokki fundido, a hot, melty, spicy mélange of tteok, chorizo, and cheese.

Korean fried chicken has redefined the meaning of “KFC” across the country. Turntable highlights the classic offering — soy garlic, spicy gochujang, or half-half — in a retro music-themed gastropub decorated with vinyl album covers. The wings (eight for $17) are the go-to move, but don’t sleep on the drumsticks. They all feature the crunchy, saucy crust and hot, juicy meat that fulfills all fried chicken cravings. In Korean fashion, they come with tangy cubes of pickled radish, and for the classic chimaek (chicken and beer) pairing, order from the $9 pint beers or the $65 towers for groups. Other anju favorites include kimchi fried rice, dumplings, and a fried potato twister drizzled with cheddar sauce and ketchup.