Joo Ok
New York, USA
2 Stars
The Experience
From Michelin Guide
In the heart of Koreatown, a freight elevator climbs to a calm, hanok-echoing dining room with skyline views. Chef Chang-ho Shin serves a Korean tasting menu that reads traditional and contemporary at once, with crisp technique and a taste for quiet intensity, from pheasant mandu with foie gras and morels to spotted prawn and geoduck dressed in vivid green house-made perilla oil. Desserts land with the same precision, often finishing with a warm sunchoke tea.
From Visitor Experiences
- A freight elevator ride to a 16th-floor dining room that nods to a hanok, minimalist, calm, with skyline views.
- A farm-and-fermentation loop that runs through the whole operation, perilla seeds grown upstate, oil cold-pressed in-house, scraps fermented into vinegars, teas, and syrups, waste composted back to the farm.
- A strict tasting-menu experience with clearly stated limits on dietary accommodations, built for precision rather than flexibility.
From Visitor Experiences
- House-made jang, the restaurant’s in-house fermentation base for sauces.
- Perilla, including perilla oil cold-pressed in-house on a weekly cadence.
- Herbs and vegetables grown at the restaurant’s upstate New York farm.
From Visitor Reviews
Tasting-menu only. A 12-course Korean tasting menu built around seasonality, fermentation, and a house pantry of jang. The restaurant lists the menu at $270 per person and notes it is closed on Sundays.
Dietaries, the restaurant notes it cannot accommodate gluten, vegetarian, vegan, shellfish, or allium.
3 Articles
A Michelin-Starred Restaurant From Seoul Uproots to Manhattan’s Koreatown
Report on the Seoul restaurant’s move to New York, the Koreatown location, and the project’s farm and fermentation focus.
ny.eater.com
Joo Ok Review (The Infatuation)
Review of the restaurant and its tasting-menu format in New York.
theinfatuation.com
KBS Documentary Insight, Super Dining: Korean Chefs in New York (Joo Ok segment)
Documentary segment featuring the restaurant and chef in New York.
youtube.com