Jongro BBQ
Jongro BBQ butchers its own primal cuts and marinates them to order. The beef platter is what that buys: brisket, skirt, ribeye, marinated chuck and kalbi. It sits one floor up from 32nd Street behind almost no signage.
Why go
The Seoul chain opened its first American room here in 2015. The house says the meat is never frozen and the cuts come in daily. Servers cook them at your table under laser thermometers and overhead smoke lamps.1
Group KFF Inc. runs it. Its founder Kyung Rim Choi opened an all-you-can-eat sibling on the same block in February 2025, Jongro BBQ Market at 39 West 32nd Street.3
Order this / avoid
- Order: the beef platter, and put pork belly on the grill with it.2
- Order: the clay pot egg out of the banchan.1
- Avoid: the all-you-can-eat sibling if the meat is why you came. Chef Jay Lee, who worked here first, told Eater the quality there is lower, brisket and pork belly excepted.3
What locals & experts say
- Luke Fortney, reporting for Eater in February 2025:
It's not the best Korean barbecue restaurant in New York. In fact, it's probably not the best Korean barbecue restaurant on its block of Koreatown. And yet, ever since Jongro opened, young diners can't get enough of its retro vibes and prices.
3 - Bryan Kim, editorial lead in New York for The Infatuation, in his Korean barbecue guide of March 2023: upstairs you
wind up in an enormous room that looks like a small village that happens to be indoors.
2
Good to know
- Getting in: Resy takes parties of seven to eighteen, and nineteen or more go by email. Everyone smaller puts a name down and waits, and the wait runs long.1
- Which door: the second floor at 22 West 32nd Street. A second Jongro BBQ trades on Roosevelt Avenue in Flushing, and the Market has rooms on 32nd and on 38th.
Verdict
could-visit — Bring four people. I would not send anyone here for a first Korean meal in New York, and I would send them for a fourth.