COTE | NEW YORK CITY by Norma Poindexter

When you’re New York City’s first Korean Steakhouse awarded with a 2021 Michelin Star, you’ve staked out a tremendous reputation for a reason. These reasons start in COTE’s downstairs’ oversized meat locker where the grade-A beef is dry-aged to perfection, then ingeniously served with chef David Shim’s classic Korean specialties: the savory egg souffle, the cold Somyn noodles in the summer, the authentic, house-made kimchi, and tangy, tantalizing, barbeque sauces. Add well-mixed, soju cocktails and an extraordinary wine list with some 1,200 labels, and the recipe for COTE’s wild success reveals a stylish, hybrid dining model combining the prime cuts of America’s finest steakhouses and the fun and fire from Korean Barbeque. Owned and operated by Simon Kim, a highly-successful Korean-American restaurateur, COTE stands out as the only Michelin-starred Korean Barbecue restaurant in the world and has a sleek, little sister Korean steakhouse in Miami. Hiding underneath COTE lies UNDERCOTE, the alluring subterranean bar and cocktail lounge with bespoke cocktails and a dark, plant-filled interior, which opened in October, 2018 and adds the icing on top of this stellar restaurant cake.

And the accolades keep coming for COTE: the prestigious James Beard Foundation awarded COTE with the “Best New Restaurant of 2018” and the “Outstanding Wine Program” in both 2019 and 2020; Wine Enthusiast awarded COTE “America’s 100 Best Wine Restaurants of 2019”; and Dame Traveler awarded COTE “The Best Steak Houses in New York City”. Your award-winning COTE journey begins when you take your seat in this striking, atmospheric dining room, where your incredible meal is grilled smokelessly on the tableside besides you. We suggest the Butcher’s Feast, with four different cuts of extraordinary beef and a luscious egg souffle that’s a meal in itself. The raw prime beef is ceremoniously brought to your table to examine and admire the rich marbling and color, and the knowledgeable server rubs the grill with oil before cooking the gorgeous beef to perfection. The succulent Hangar Steak, dry-aged Ribeye, tender Flat-Iron steak, and marinated Kalbi (ribs) grill beautifully and rapidly heighten your appetite with the accompanying, dynamic Korean flavors, from kimchi to house-made ssamjang, a thick, spicy dipping sauce. This grilled feast is bountifully accompanied by enough seasonal banchan (delectable small side dishes), chayote pickles with jalapeno, crisp cauliflower pickles with garlic stems, and mouth-watering stews to envelop your entire table. You can’t leave without the hand-churned, soft vanilla ice cream topped with soy caramel. COTE is a carnivorous wonder world, where you can have it all and eat it too.

DETAILS
COTE | 16 W 22nd St, New York, NY 10010 | + 1.212.401.7986
Images courtesy of COTE