Musaek
6 E thirty second St, nr. fifth Ave.
A riff on fish and chips.
Picture: Courtesy of Musaek
A specialty of the South Korean coastal metropolis Sokcho, mulhoe is fish stew that’s excellent for summer season. Spicy uncooked fish is served chilled with a chilly soup and, after all, chilly noodles. At Musaek, on the japanese fringe of Koreatown, the soup is served on the facet and the noodles are bouncy konjac. “It’s principally like a seafood sashimi with chilly broth. It’s so savory and so refreshing,” says the restaurant’s co-owner, Danny Hanh. “It’s tangy, candy, and has some acid from vinegar and lemon — you pour it over the seafood.”
The person behind the mulhoe is chef Lenny Moon, who labored at Jungsik and was the chief chef at Hortus. Now he’s joined up with the trio behind the fledgling Urimat Hospitality Group, which has opened three spots this 12 months, all in a 30,000-square-foot area stretching from thirty second Avenue to thirty first Avenue. The others are Howoo, a beef-centric Korean BBQ spot, and Dubuhaus, with selfmade tofu. Right here, the main focus is on seafood.
Occupying the 12,000-square-foot basement under the 2 different eating places, Musaek is reached by means of a protracted hallway. It’s dimly lit and engaging with dark-green banquettes flanking a U-shaped bar on the middle of the room. The ribbed glass above blurs the bottles and there’s muted gentle coming from underneath the bar’s countertop. It’s a spot the place, Hanh says, they need to introduce seafood dishes which are in any other case not typically seen within the metropolis’s Korean eating places.
Along with the mulhoe, that features jiritang, a sort of monkfish soup. The port metropolis of Masan is understood for monkfish, Hanh says, and it’s related to the spicy monkfish stew known as agujjim. Right here, the jiritang broth is flavored with ginger and enormous Korean inexperienced onions. Samhap comes with octopus that’s braised in dashi and sliced skinny, stir-fried kimchee, tiny fried enoki mushrooms, and ricotta ssamjang. Wando seaweed is made right into a jelly topped with uni, ikura, and soy sauce; chungmu gimbap comes with fried inexperienced onion, spicy squid, and radish kimchi.
Mussels on ice.
Picture: Courtesy of Musaek
Whereas there’s a little bit of nostalgia on the menu, too — within the type of deep-fried shrimp heads meant to evoke Seukkang shrimp crackers, a favourite childhood snack of the cooks — not every thing is pulled from the peninsula: Moon additionally makes fish and chips with shishamo, a sort of smelt that Koreans name “ice fish,” that’s vodka- and beer-battered and deep-fried. These are small fish, filled with roe and edible bones. Together with the potatoes, that are steamed then fried, the dish is brightened up with a white kimchee slaw.
All the fried meals will, the group hopes, get folks ingesting cocktails. John Roel Carp, who labored on the close by bar Osamil Upstairs, designed a menu of drinks which are all clarified and made in batches. They’re largely made with Korean elements, too: Assume basil-infused vodka with hallabong or Jeju mandarin; tequila with barley tea; and Toki whiskey with perilla leaf that’s baked and dried. The thought, Hanh says, is to “share the flavors” between the bar and eating room.
EAT LIKE THE EXPERTS.
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