Inside the New Southeast Asian N.Y.C. Restaurant From a Korean Fine Dining Pioneer
The Michelin two-starred Jungsik has long been one of the best Korean restaurants in New York City and a proving ground for outstanding chefs from J.P. Park to Eunji Lee. And now the team there is expanding their scope, at the Southeast Asian SEA, which opened Wednesday, as Resy reported.
Jungsik’s more casual sibling restaurant is the brainchild of Jungsik Yim, who’s enlisted Jun Hee Park as the executive chef of the restaurant (Park is the former sous chef at Jungsik). Yim initially signed the lease for the space back in June 2019, but his aspirations for SEA (which stands for Southeast Asian) had to be temporarily tamped down due to the pandemic. Now, though, he’s exploring the larger flavors of Southeast Asia, from Singapore to Thailand to Vietnam and Laos.
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Yim “kept his mind very open, humbly knowing that since he’s not Southeast Asian, doing Southeast Asian food could be shocking to the world,” Jean E. Lee, the general manager and Yim’s translator, told Resy. “But he felt that if you know how delicious food tastes, then that shouldn’t put a barrier up.”
And the food here certainly seems delicious: Dishes up and down the menu draw inspiration from the entire region, such as in a pork noodle soup whose broth boils for at least six hours; Park said that it’s a nod to both Vietnamese pho and Malaysian bak kut teh. And the team has infused some classic New York dishes with Southeast Asian flavors, like the seafood platter, which reinterprets the seafood tower: Oysters, yellowtail, spotted prawns, and scallops are accompanied by cocktail sauces infused with fish sauce and herbs.
The drinks are just as important, with a pared-down cocktail menu that similarly showcases classics with Southeast Asian spins. The Dirty “Cha Yen,” for example, is a riff on the Old Fashioned with Thai iced tea and orange blossom water. Or there’s the Pink Coconut Punch with ube and artisanal soju. A strong non-alcoholic program ranges from spirit-free cocktails to teas like a lemongrass ginger blend or pomelo blossom green.
While the vibe is much more low-key than that of Jungsik, with an a la carte menu and a colorful dining room, eventually the team will open the more high-end SEA Lab downstairs. There, you can gather round the 15-seat chef’s counter for a tasting-menu-only experience.
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