Offering a price fixed menu of $130, Chef Hoyoung Kim’s restaurant Jua has joined the highly successful group of modern and creative Korean restaurants in NYC. Jua is the result of the partnership between Chef Kim and Hand Hospitality Group (the team behind Her Name is Han, Atoboy or Atomix among others) and is located in Flatiron.
The restaurant is very tastefully decorated, with brick walls, wooden floors and high ceilings. Simple and sophisticated.
The menu consists of 7 dishes, 2 of them desserts, and offers a wine pairing of $95. The length of the menu is enough to leave you satisfied but not overly stuffed, which we appreciate.
The meal at Jua starts with a bang and the level doesn’t drop. The first dish, Caviar Kim, is a reinterpretation of the classic kimbap, it is filled with beef tartare, truffle rice, kimchi and avocado, topped with beluga caviar and all wrapped in crunchy seaweed. As you can imagine, it was exquisite.
The second dish is the Bang-eo (yellowtail). Much more refreshing and light, slices of yellowtail sashimi are covered with a layer of roasted beetroot.
And now what we believe to be the STAR of the meal, Jook, or Korean rice porridge. This dish is simple exquisite, a master piece. This rice porridge is mixed with foie gras, eel and trumpet mushrooms and topped with a $25 abalone extra which we added and highly encourage you to do so. Comforting goodness at it’s finest, we are still dreaming of this dish.
Now onto the mains, we started with the fish dish, a perfectly sous-vide cooked halibut on a white asparagus and dashi butter sauce and topped with grilled leeks. Very soft and delicate.
The meat dish, galbi chan, is a super tender short rib with an array of small side dishes: kimchi, sisho leaf, wood ear mushroom and crispy lotus root among others. A perfect ending to the savory part of the menu.
For dessert, first came a refreshing strawberry sorbet with yoghurt, which is the perfect segue to the last dessert and final dish of the night the Hotteok. This crispy sweet pancake is covered with syrup, topped with caramelized pecans and filled with black sugar. It is some kind of cross between a donut and a sticky bun, but better. Truly decadent and the perfect way to finish this fabulous meal.
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