Cote – the Korean steakhouse that rewrote Flatiron's grill rules

On a stretch of West 22nd Street that once belonged to photography studios and after-work bars, Cote rewired the New York steakhouse. Owner Simon Kim opened the restaurant on 8 June 2017, building the room around a single idea: fuse the tabletop grill and banchan of Korean barbecue with the rib-eyes, wedge salads and wine cellars of the classic American chophouse. The gamble paid off within months, and Cote became the first Korean steakhouse in the United States to earn a MICHELIN Star. It holds one MICHELIN Star still, a distinction it has kept every year since opening, and the kitchen now shares its name with sister rooms in Miami, Las Vegas and Singapore. In a city thick with both Korean barbecue joints and temples to beef, Cote remains the rare address that is genuinely both at once, run with the polish of fine dining and the noise of a table that is cooking its own dinner.

01The room and the setting

Cote sits between Fifth and Sixth Avenues on a block that, when the restaurant arrived in 2017, was still mostly photography studios and bars rather than dining rooms. The restaurant has since anchored what has become one of the busiest tables of the neighbourhood. At the centre of the operation is a smokeless live-fire grill built into every four-top, so that cuts are finished at the table rather than delivered already carved. Downstairs, in the restaurant's own dry-aging room, steaks rest in Himalayan sea salt before they ever reach the grill, in a 28 square-metre space that is the only one of its kind among New York's Korean steakhouses.

Beneath the dining room is Undercote, the subterranean bar and cocktail lounge Kim opened in October 2018. It takes no reservations, seating completed parties of up to six on a first-come basis — a looser, louder counterpoint to the restaurant above.

02The chef

Executive chef David Shim traded an early ambition of playing professional soccer for a line cook's apron, starting in the same Flatiron District where he would later make his name, at Gramercy Tavern. He moved on through Veritas, L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon at the Four Seasons, Kristalbelli and the M. Wells Steakhouse on Long Island. It was at M. Wells, in 2017, that Shim met Simon Kim, who asked him to run the kitchen of the Korean steakhouse he was about to open.

Insider tip

Dinner nightly; phone reservationists answer 12pm–10pm daily; Undercote bar below is walk-in only.

Shim has stayed at the stoves ever since, now overseeing culinary operations across the growing Cote group while the Flatiron kitchen remains his base.

03The cooking

Kim was born in Seoul and moved with his family to Long Island at thirteen, a dual upbringing he has said shaped the entire concept. Before Cote, he ran Piora, a MICHELIN-starred restaurant in the West Village that has since closed, folding both ventures into his company Gracious Hospitality Management, founded in 2016. The name Cote is a Korean word for flower or bloom, chosen for its echo of the French côte de boeuf and côte-rôtie — a small pun that sums up the kitchen's whole premise of cooking two traditions against each other.

Within six months of opening, Cote was awarded its first MICHELIN Star in the 2018 Guide, a rare honour for a steakhouse and, at the time, unique for a Korean one. The following year GQ named it the country's best new restaurant, and the James Beard Foundation listed it as a semifinalist for Best New Restaurant in 2018.

04What to order

Dinner opens with raw bar staples sharpened by the Korean pantry: a Wedge Salad built on iceberg, bacon and sesame dressing, and a Steak Tartare of grass-fed top-round with pear and crispy tendon puffs. The Steak & Eggs — hand-cut filet mignon tartare with caviar and milk toast — has become something of a signature, alongside a caviar-laced Cote Gimbap diners assemble themselves. For the main event, the Butcher's Feast sets four selected cuts of USDA Prime and American wagyu alongside ban-chan, scallion salad and two stews, while the Steak Omakase hands the whole evening over to the kitchen. Reserve cuts stretch to A5 ribeye from Miyazaki, Sendai and Kobe, sold by the ounce, and a horizontal tasting lines up three regions of A5 side by side. Savoury accompaniments such as Dol-sot Bibimbap and Kimchi Wagyu Paella are built to share across the table.

05Wine and drinks

The wine programme, curated under beverage director Victoria James, runs past 1,200 labels and has twice won the James Beard Foundation's award for Outstanding Wine Program, in 2019 and 2020. Bottles are backed by a cocktail list built for a grill-side evening, and diners can trade up to the Grand Tour, a wine pairing designed to run alongside the Steak Omakase. Caviar service — Regiis Ova Kaluga Royal Hybrid through to Petrossian's Tsar Imperial Beluga Hybrid — sits at the sharper end of a wine list built as much for showing off as for pairing.

06When to go and booking

Cote serves dinner Sunday to Wednesday from 5pm to 11pm and Thursday to Saturday from 5pm until midnight, with a to-go counter open earlier in the evening. The MICHELIN Guide lists the kitchen's own price guidance as spare no expense, and tables at the Flatiron flagship are booked well ahead, especially around the grill-side four-tops. Phone reservations are taken daily; outside those hours the restaurant asks guests to email rather than call.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.