Joo Ok

Joo Ok holds two MICHELIN stars on the sixteenth floor of a Koreatown building. The course Bryan Kim rates highest is carried by pine nuts grown upstate.1 2

Why go

The restaurant came from Seoul and runs under Hand Hospitality. The room is laid out like a traditional Korean house, with the city through deep-set windows.2 Bryan Kim reviewed it for The Infatuation in September 2024, on a twelve-course tasting that ran about three hours.2 Yoon Haeundae Galbi up on 36th Street is the other end of that argument, a Busan grill.3

Chang-ho Shin opened the original Joo Ok in Seoul in 2016 and closed it rather than run two, moving his core team and their families to New York with the doenjang, the soy sauce and a bonnet bellflower liquor he had fermented himself.6 The perilla seed oil Kim rates above the shellfish it dresses is grown on the group's own farm at Bloomingburg, upstate, and cold-pressed in this kitchen every week.4 They make the jang in house by hand, and the peels, stems and rinds go into more than thirty vinegars, teas and syrups that turn up again in the food and the drinks. The name means threading precious jade marbles. The guide moved the room from one star to two in the 2025 New York selection, a year after it opened.5

Order this / avoid

Order: the tasting. It is the only real format and it changes with the season.2
Order: anything the pine nut sauce or the perilla seed oil turns up in. Kim rates both above the geoduck and the lobster they are dressing.2
Order: the jang mool hoe if it is running, bigfin reef squid with seaweed and uni in a cool broth infused with smoked pumpkin.2
Avoid: treating the Mishima wagyu as the climax. It arrives late and Kim wanted something with more personality in that slot.2

What locals & experts say

Bryan Kim, The Infatuation (9 September 2024, 8.4): A tiny bowl of poached lobster is a highlight, but not because of the lobster. That's just a vehicle for a frothy, sweet, and intensely nutty sauce made from pine nuts grown Upstate.2
MICHELIN Guide: Two MICHELIN Stars, filed under Korean and contemporary cooking.1
The guide's own account of the promotion, in the 2025 selection: a Korean tasting menu that is both traditional and contemporary and exudes calm, collected refinement.5
Chang-ho Shin, on why he shut a decorated Seoul restaurant to come here: I needed to be challenged more.6

Good to know

Price: $280 on the restaurant's own page4, against the $270 The Infatuation paid in September 2024 and the $220 Eater recorded for the 2025 selection.7
One door: the city's register carries a single permit under this name, at 22 West 32nd Street, last inspected in January 2026. The Seoul original closed when Shin moved.
Booking: essential, and it costs money before you arrive. The house takes a $200 per-guest deposit that stops being refundable three days out, and a no-show is billed the full menu price.4
Who you can bring: nobody under twelve, and nobody who needs the kitchen to work around gluten, shellfish, seaweed, allium, heat or a vegetarian diet. The restaurant says so plainly on its own page.4
Your own wine: corkage is $90 a bottle, wine only, two bottles at most, and nothing already on their list.4
The door: the entrance is a freight elevator at 22 West 32nd Street, between a Citi Bank and Hana Michi.4

Verdict

must-visit — Ask for a window seat when you book, and budget for wine on top of the set price.

Joo Ok.