Okdongsik, a newly opened restaurant in Bayside, brings a fresh take on Korean comfort food with a focus on simplicity and high-quality ingredients.
Located at 43-13 Bell Blvd., the restaurant is the latest venture of Chef Ok Dongsik, a renowned culinary figure whose first restaurant in Seoul, Korea, quickly garnered attention for its minimalist approach to traditional Korean dishes.
Since 2018, Okdongsik has been listed in the Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand, which recognizes establishments that serve exceptional food at a reasonable price. Now, with the opening of Okdongsik in Bayside, the celebrated chef aims to introduce a refined, yet simple, culinary experience to a new audience, offering dishes that highlight the true essence of Korean comfort food.
The restaurant has a unique style in the way it prepares and serves food. Its menu has just four items, each prepared for guests to truly indulge in the food they are eating, mainly as it is, without the need to add more ingredients and flavors.
“He wanted to introduce some kind of fundamental flavor of things other than barbeque because nowadays Korean food is really too sweet and they want to give too much impact to one single item,” said Kyle Lee, the Director of Operations at OkDongSik, who translated for Chef Ok Dongsik in the interview. “It’s really packed up with flavors, but at the same time, it’s too much. He wants to convey simplicity through each unique flavor from each ingredient.”
After gaining recognition for his first restaurant in Seoul, Chef Ok Dongsik brought his culinary expertise to Manhattan with a pop-up collaboration with Hand Hospitality, which ran from November 2022 to April 2023.
During the event, he introduced his signature dish, Dweji Gomtang, a comforting pork broth served with rice, seokbakji, and gochuji. Widely regarded as a staple of Korean comfort food, this dish evokes a sense of nostalgia akin to the American classic chicken noodle soup. The pop-up quickly garnered a loyal following, prompting Chef Ok to open his first permanent location in Manhattan just a month later, in May 2023, at 13 E. 30th St.
Building on that success, Okdongsik expanded to Bayside with a new restaurant, which opened on Jan. 30 to an enthusiastic reception from the local community, particularly among Korean residents eager to experience Chef Ok’s acclaimed cuisine.
“He wanted to introduce to the Bayside neighborhood the different kinds of Korean cuisine, not like duboki or bbq; there’s so many things other than that,” said Lee while translating for Dongsik.
When guests visit the restaurant, they are given a menu with four items, with Dweji Gomtang as the main dish. After that, there’s kimchi mandoo, similar to a dumpling filled with pork and tofu. There’s also haemul wanja, a meaty seafood cake lightly seasoned with soy sauce, and naeng jeyuk, a slow-cooked and chilled pork served with gochuji, a fermented pepper paste that goes best with pork.
“We want to convey the original flavor from each ingredient,” said Lee. “We really want to focus on the simplicity of everything. Operation-wise, menu-wise, it’s limited because we want to focus on what we are best at, not only adding more stuff to the menu, so then we cannot focus on each item.”
Even the restaurant itself has a simple and clean look. There are no tables scattered throughout the venue, just a single counter for customers to eat on in front of an open kitchen station. The restaurant offers a sense of tranquility from the busy and loud street outside.
The restaurant, which has been featured in the NY Times and has gained its own cult following, intends to continue expanding quickly throughout the globe. After having a pop-up in Paris last year, they anticipate opening a space in May or June of this year, as well as upcoming locations in Hawaii and Tokyo, with an opening month to be determined.
“We really want to use local ingredients,” said Lee. “Some Korean restaurants import really special ingredients from Korea, but we want to expand to other countries and in the U.S., which means we have to use ingredients that’s familiar to other races, not only for Koreans.”
