MSN
- April Kang
- Apr 3
- 2 min read
Another High-End LA Korean Barbecue Makes Its Way to Manhattan
Story by Nadia Chaudhury
Last year, Ahgassi Gopchang, a Los Angeles restaurant that specializes in offal, landed in Manhattan’s Koreatown. Now, another high-end Korean barbecue restaurant imported from Los Angeles is making its way into New York City this month.
Jeong Yuk Jeom will open in Koreatown at 44 West 32nd Street, Unit 2, near Broadway, starting on Thursday, February 6. It's the latest in a string of high-end openings in Koreatown over the past year. In an area teeming with Korean barbecue restaurants, Jeong Yuk Jeom hopes to garner interest focusing on dry-aged beef.
This particular restaurant — whose name is Korean for “butcher shop” — offers fancier cuts of beef for DIY grilling at tables, including prime-grade and dry-aged options — think large dry-aged tomahawk steaks ($280), prime boneless short ribs ($65), aged prime tenderloins ($66). There’s the Butcher’s Pride, a meat package with varying levels of beef selections and banchan from $149 to $279; as well as the a la carte options (which expand into $45 pork cuts like belly and collar).
Beyond barbecue, there’s seasoned beef tendons, dumplings, beef tartare in sushi and bibimbap formats; cold noodles, soups and stews, and vegan meats made using Korean brand Unlimeat. Drinks span wines, soju, rice wines, beers, spirits, cocktails, and boozy slushies.
Jeong Yuk Jeom’s two-story space is big — 2,000 square feet with 32 seats on the first floor and 4,000 square feet with 143 seats on the second floor, which also includes a semi-private dining room. An LED-ceilinged staircase connects the floors.
Co-owners and brothers Jaeyong and Andrew Son opened the original Jeong Yuk Jeom in Koreatown in Los Angeles in 2018. In Los Angeles Times critic and Eater alum Bill Addison’s review, he wrote, “Dry-aged meats have been inching into the Korean barbecue lexicon across the nation lately,” pointing to other players like Cote. “When the charcoal is white-hot,” he added, “the pleasure of quality beef is obvious and Jeong Yuk Jeom falls into place as a fine, stunningly designed addition to Ktown’s meat palaces.”
This is the restaurant’s second overall location. Through a spokesperson, the brothers said “expanding to NYC, another major food capital, makes sense to further grow the brand.” They picked Koreatown because while “the Korean barbecue scene in NYC is strong,” there is still “always room for high-quality, authentic, and premium options.”
This isn’t their first time operating in New York, either. The brothers previously opened the Queens location of another Korean barbecue restaurant Baekjeong and trained staff of the Manhattan one, which became one of Koreatown’s most essential Korean barbecue options until it closed. They are no longer a part of the restaurant, but that restaurant is in the works to reopen in Manhattan.
