The 100 Best Restaurants in New York City in 2024

No. 40 Okdongsik

This 13-seat Korean counter on East 30th St is as good an argument for one-dish restaurants as we’ll ever get, never mind that it actually serves two dishes. One of them is mandoo. They’re stuffed with minced pork, tofu and glass noodles, and they are great — no afterthought. But the dish that makes Okdongsik one of the most valueable addresses in New York dining is its dweji gomtang, a clear prok broth. Each bowl, outfitted with almost-firm grains of white rice and very thin slices of simmered pork shoulder, gestures toward transcendence, or as near as you can come to it across the street from a Best Western.

by Pete Wells / Apr 1, 2024

The Elusive Restaurant Group Redefining Korean Dining
in New York

Hand Hospitality has become a major player by channeling the creative energy of Seoul. Korean dining in New York has never been more interesting, dynamic or diverse. And a single company, which owns or co-owns all four of these restaurants and 17 more, is generating much of that innovation: Hand Hospitality. Hand has achieved what many non-Western restaurants still find difficult to do in America: win wide appeal while focusing on a narrow audience — in this case, young Koreans and Korean Americans keen for a taste of the energy pouring out of South Korea.

by Priya Krishna / Feb 5, 2024

The Most Powerful New Yorkers You’ve Never Heard of

49 People who are actually running the city.

The power to shift the culinary landscape; Kihyun Lee is filling the city with Korean fine-dining restaurants. Lee entered his first partnership with the couple JungHyun and JeongEun Park. Together, the group opened Atoboy and Atomix — the latter of which went on to rank among the city’s most acclaimed tasting counters. Lee also started plucking restaurants directly from Seoul, importing that city’s brightest talent and legacy institutions.

by New York Magazine / Oct 23, 2023

Ariari Is Still One of Manhattan’s Hottest Tables

Open since November, Ariari serves memorable dishes from the port city of Busan. On a recent Tuesday things were pretty dead, and only a couple of places were more than one-eighth full. But then I got to Ariari; knots of customers lingered outside, excitedly meeting friends, as the place was filling up fast. I stepped inside and requested a two-top and was told the wait would be an hour.

by Robert Sietsema / Sep 5, 2023

Restaurant Review: Okdongsik Serves Two Things, and Both Are Outstanding

The tiny counter from one of South Korea’s star chefs is a near-replica of its counterpart in Seoul. I don’t think I ever understood how any meat broth could be the basis of a restaurant’s reputation until I ate the dweji gomtang at Okdongsik. This may sound like a pretty spartan soup, but each part of it is excellent, and best of all is the pork broth. I can’t remember the last time I tasted a more delicious liquid that didn’t contain at least some alcohol.

by Pete Wells / Jun 20, 2023

HAND Hospitality Opens Samwoojung in Midtown Manhattan

Samwoojung opens in Midtown Manhattan, a block from the heart of bustling Koreatown (138 West 32nd Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues), as a one-of-a-kind, old-school bulgogi house. The concept hails from Korea, and it is the restaurant’s first-ever appearance stateside. Samwoojung first opened in 1963 in Seosomun, Seoul - and for the last 60 years, it has served generations of diners its original legacy recipe for Seoul-style bulgogi, which is characterized by its distinctive broth and prepared in a special dome-shaped copper vessel.

by FSR magazine / Jun 16, 2023