Jungsik, which opened not long ago in the fabled old Chanterelle space in Tribeca, aspires to be the first modern haute-Korean restaurant in all of New York City. This means that at the bar you can enjoy soothing $17 cocktails rimmed with crushed seaweed or mixed with exotic ingredients like green plums, and an unfiltered Korean rice wine called makgeolli. The tables at this ambitious little establishment are covered with crisp white linens, and the painstakingly prepared dinners are served in handcrafted white bowls and giant plates as big as gull wings. There’s classic Korean fried chicken on the menu, but it’s stuck with a bamboo toothpick and served as a thimble-size amuse. The only dinner options are a three-course $80 or five-course $115 prix fixe, which, as any David Chang freak can tell you, is almost enough to buy the entire menu at the original Momofuku outlet.
The man behind this rash experiment in international dining is a talented young cook named Jung Sik Yim. He’s a veteran of Aquavit and Bouley, as well as several grand, Michelin-approved kitchens in Europe, and he runs a popular restaurant in Seoul called Jungsik Dang, which has been praised for its “nouvelle” approach to Korean cuisine. Here at Yim’s New York branch, the formerly ornate space has been remodeled in a generic modern style (clean, unadorned walls, white curtains over the windows) and divided into three dimly lit, slightly feng shui–challenged rooms, the last two separated by a sliding door. On my visits, dinner was served in the narrow middle room, which has white banquettes along both walls and is set with two small rows of tables that face each other, like in the dining car of a train. There’s also a white acrylic bar in the front of the house and a curiously dead gallery space called Cube, where you can examine (and purchase) the work of Korean artists.
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