Kim is about to open Bar Chimera on April 18.
Photograph: Clemens Kois
Within the 9 years since he opened Cote, the Flatiron District mash-up of an American steakhouse and a Korean-barbecue joint that continues to be jammed every evening, Simon Kim has turn into one of many metropolis’s true empire builders. He’s New York’s most well-known purveyor of caviar-topped hen nuggets together with his follow-up, Coqodaq, and has expanded Cote to Miami, Singapore, and Las Vegas. Regardless of the expansion, his ambition has not dimmed, and he has returned his focus to New York as a result of that is the place he desires to serve one of the best martini on the planet.
Kim’s newest venture is his grandest but. “That is my Sistine Chapel,” he says, trying up on the 60-foot-high ceilings of the arcade at 550 Madison, a skyscraper designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee that after housed the Quilted Giraffe. Right here he has constructed, with the assistance of restaurant designer David Rockwell, Bar Chimera, a three-bar beast with each devoted to a single specialty: wine, whiskey, or the martini. “One of the best martini bar on the planet belongs in New York Metropolis,” Kim says.
Conducting that purpose isn’t as easy as getting the drink’s temperature colder than the martinis at Dukes in London or discovering higher olives than Musso & Frank in L.A. If Bar Chimera finally ends up topping the record of greatest martinis throughout the globe, it’s going to at the very least partly be as a result of identical purpose New York makes one of the best pizza dough on the planet: water. For a number of the home martinis, pre-batched and served from the freezer, Kim’s group “examined greater than 50 varieties of water, pH ranges, mineral content material, and construction to lastly give you the right water in your martini,” Kim says. “We created a proprietary water that’s first filtered for purity, then remineralized and loaded with electrolytes to revive important minerals, much more so when ingesting.”
Lofty ambitions don’t come low cost, and sure neither will an evening out at 550 Madison. The area justifies excessive costs: Bar Chimera’s centerpiece is an enormous pine tree stretching towards the ceiling. Kim — whose household moved from South Korea to Lengthy Island when he was 13 within the Nineteen Nineties — says the pine tree is essential in Korean tradition. This one, over 20 toes tall and dwarfing two different pines mounted within the heart of a customized marble fountain, is American. Kim notes the clear metaphor isn’t an accident. “As a restaurateur, I discovered that I by no means wish to be one of the best reproduction of what exists in New York or Korea,” he says. “We wish to create what’s uniquely New York — totally different roots however deep respect to all of its cultures.”
Nice restaurateurs have outlined this metropolis’s tastes for so long as anybody can bear in mind. Whereas Kim, who continues to be in his early 40s, is at the very least a few a long time away from reaching the identical degree of affect as Keith McNally or Nobu Matsuhisa, his profession to this point has put him on a path to be the sort of operator whose locations will nonetheless be round — and full — years from now. The success hardly occurred in a single day. Kim grew up working within the restaurant trade, beginning with bussing tables and making drinks in locations owned by his mother and father. The trade made sense to him as a very good profession choice, so he labored his manner up the ladder and into jobs with a number of the premier hospitality teams within the U.S. Maybe because of this, he’s the type of proprietor who obsesses over particulars and is aware of how to make sure his locations function effectively. This, probably, is how he got here up with the Ninja Tunnel.
A ramification at Bar Chimera.
Photograph: Gary He
Kim calls the upstairs area “the well mannered place.” Within the coming months, it’s going to develop to incorporate Sushi Yoshitake, chef Masahiro Yoshitake’s omakase den. In the meantime, the subterranean rooms are darkish “to a degree the place an government was like, ‘This appears like an excessive amount of of a celebration place,’ ” Kim says. “You’re feeling somewhat little bit of discomfort, even, as a result of there’s a DJ and whatnot.” Right here, bathed within the pink glow of a dry-aging room that takes up all the again wall of the bar on the decrease degree and serves as an entryway to a brand new Cote, Kim reveals off a hidden door by way of a hidden hallway that’s completely out of the road of sight for someone who may be having fun with a martini or Merlot on the bar. That is the place dishes shall be ferried by way of the in any other case crowded, darkish restaurant to seem at tables like magic. “I’m pleased with our means to design one thing that’s not simply actually lovely but additionally hyperfunctional,” he says. Despite the fact that prospects might by no means discover this a part of the operation, Kim thinks the Ninja Tunnel, as he named it, is as essential to the 550 Madison expertise because the wine record or sound system. The half prospects will see, all the entryway to Cote, got here from a distinct inspiration: Kim requested Rockwell Group to mannequin this passageway after the caves that give option to the treasure-filled grotto in The Goonies. “There’s the pirate ship and all of the vegetation in every single place,” he says. “It was probably the most bonkers, immersive expertise. I shared that inspiration, and so they delivered us precisely that.”
Rockwell — the group — was first introduced on to redo the amenity ranges of the constructing after it had been bought by the Olayan Group in 2016. Rockwell — the individual — had labored with Kim beforehand (on Coqodaq and Cote Las Vegas), however he additionally had expertise bringing a restaurant to life in a Johnson-designed constructing with Vong, a Jean-Georges Vongerichten venture within the Lipstick Constructing, again in 1992. On the time, not wanting to attract the ire of an previous postmodern grasp, Rockwell reached out to Johnson and confirmed him the plans. Practically 30 years later, engaged on 550 Madison, he heard there was going to be a ground-floor restaurant. “There’s solely two or thrice in my life the place I’ve stated, ‘I wish to get entangled in that venture,’” he explains, attempting to recollect different examples in addition to “the unique Nobu.” He says all the venture on this constructing has been “a full-on labor of affection — an opportunity to create a brand new midtown vacation spot that, in some methods, is the results of my 45-year love affair with NYC: its eating places, public areas, and vitality.”
Strolling by way of the area sporting a double-breasted Ralph Lauren Purple Label blazer and a Yankees hat, Kim reveals me one of many chandeliers; every had been reduce and assembled by hand. “There’s like two layers of sunshine,” he says, “the ring gentle and this type of star explosion of the bulbs inside.” After Cote’s success, Kim might have constructed a wonderful dwelling opening outposts in high-earner locations around the globe. He nonetheless might, however for now he desires this venture to be his legacy — and for New York to embrace his imaginative and prescient. “It doesn’t exist wherever else within the metropolis,” he says, “this degree of structure, this degree of grandiose.”
Kim and David Rockwell.
Photograph: Clemens Kois
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