Hyun

Hyun Restaurant Review:

About the restaurant: Among the many often-raucous cook-at-your-table BBQ restaurants lining Manhattan’s Koreatown streets, Hyun stands out for its refinement and upscale dining experience. The restaurant shouldn’t really be called BBQ, lest it call up an image of the stand-in-line-until-you-get-in restaurants that crowd the area. The long, narrow restaurant, comprised of only 10 tables, including four in private rooms, defines elegance with a Korean flair. Clean design lines, rooms with sliding wooden doors, and modern, dramatic lighting set the tone. Presentation and service are paramount and you are meant to feel like you’re dining as royalty. Outdoor dining is available.

Likes: Wagyu beef, exceptional service.
Dislikes: Expect to pay a steep price for such a high-end experience.

Food & Drinks: The concept is straightforward: to bring the type of service-forward Korean dining experience found in Asia to diners here. Serving platters and dishes are, in fact, from high-temple Korean heritage and are the correct vessels to serve the wondrously beefy, marbled A5 Wagyu cuts served. You can choose to dine à la carte, or from the monthly tasting menu, or let your personal chef guide you with his dinner recommendations. Since most of the dishes and their accompaniments will be quite novel, it is suggested that you listen to your personal chef. In lieu of kimchi, which usually precedes a Korean BBQ meal, Hyun offers its own version, Kimchi Biji-Jeon, a trio of house-made pickles such as pickled garlic, earthy-tasting pickled parsnips, and a seasonal pickled vegetable. Following is a Wagyu teaser, roll-ups of delicate strips of meat surrounding bean sprouts and tied up with pieces of chive. Dipping sauces with honey or dashi accompany. The stars of the show, three cuts of Wagyu, cooked in sequence to create a progression from mildest to strongest flavor, are prepared on the invection stove which allows the Wagyu taste to shine through without the interference of coal or other cooking elements. House-made salts include the likes of wine salt and Italian truffle salt and are meant for sprinkling on the meat to enhance the flavor. Homemade wasabi and yuzu are also provided. Unusual at Korean restaurants, haloumi, homemade Korean sheep and cow cheese, is served grilled --- the truffle salt is heavenly on it. While there is no elaborate dessert on the chef’s menu, a sweet uni from Hokkaido will satisfy. If you prefer, there are shiso sorbet or Korean ice cream and chapssal (a mochi-like creation with ice cream wrapped in a thin layer of rice cake). The drink menu includes wines from around the world, sakes, Korean sul and inventive cocktails.