Nōksu – fine dining twenty feet under Herald Square

Twenty feet below Herald Square, behind an unmarked black door reached down a flight of stairs inside the 34th Street–Herald Square subway station, Nōksu serves ten courses to just fifteen guests a night. The restaurant occupies a space that was once a newsstand and a barbershop, transformed into a black-and-white marbled counter that draws on the Korean ink-wash tradition of sumuk-hwa, opened by Bobby Kwak and Joseph Ko, the pair also behind Koreatown's Baekjeong and Sundaes Best. It opened in 2023 and holds One MICHELIN Star, a distinction it has carried since 2024. Guests gain entry only with a code sent on the day of their reservation, trading the clatter of one of the city's busiest transit hubs for a quiet room where the cooking looks forward even as the name looks back, to a valley running clear between mountains.

01The room and the setting

The address gives little away: a corner of 32nd Street and Broadway, opposite a Chase Bank, where the entrance to the subway doubles as the entrance to the restaurant. Inside, what was once a newsstand and a barbershop has been turned into an elegant, intimate dining room.

The design plays on contrast: a glossy black stone counter runs the length of the room, and the black-and-white palette throughout nods to sumuk-hwa, Korean ink-wash painting, blending tradition with a contemporary fit-out. The effect, fifteen paces from a subway platform, is of stepping into another city entirely.

02The chef

Nōksu has moved through three kitchens in as many years. It opened under chef Dae Kim, a cook who began his career washing dishes at a hotel in Chicago before training under Thomas Keller at Per Se in New York, and it was his cooking that earned the restaurant its first MICHELIN Star in 2024. His chef de cuisine, Singapore-born Ng Jing Wen, took over as executive chef in September 2025, before the pass changed hands again, this time to Aaron Chang.

Insider tip

Book via Resy up to 30 days ahead; menu is seafood-led and not suited to young children.

Chang, 32, was born in Queens and spent childhood summers in Busan, a connection to Korean seafood cookery that still surfaces in dishes such as a comforting anchovy broth with sujebi. His other formative kitchen was the two-MICHELIN-starred Atera in Tribeca, where he rose to chef de cuisine under Ronny Emborg and absorbed a New Nordic sense of restraint. At Nōksu he now works alongside a dedicated pastry chef, Brandon Ting.

03The cooking and what to order

The tasting menu runs to ten courses, weighted toward the sea — finned fish, shellfish, and a single course of meat — and now carries Chang's dual signature, combining his Korean heritage with New Nordic technique rather than the French-Korean register of the restaurant's first menu.

The current line-up moves from a Rice Flower course of shrimp tartare with gochujang and braised kombu, through Baeri Caviar with smoked eel, horseradish and ginger pearls, to a Pine Nut course pairing scallop with Kristal caviar and peas. Langoustine arrives with mushroom mandu, burdock and kimchi; octopus with chojang, glazed corn and Iberico pork; beef tenderloin with chrysanthemum, gjetost and a ssam-jang jus. Dessert runs from a celery course with passionfruit and coconut yogurt to strawberry with gochujang, tomato and gim, finished with petit fours that include a gochugaru honey smoked Gouda and an anchovy crispy rice bon bon.

04Wine and drinks

Nōksu publishes its own beverage list to run alongside the ten courses, a programme that won the restaurant a 2025 Wine Spectator Restaurant Award on top of its Michelin recognition. Guests may bring one 750ml bottle of wine or sake not already on the list, for a corkage fee of $150.

05When to go and booking

The ten-course menu is priced at $255, exclusive of tax and gratuity, and reservations are taken exclusively through Resy, released thirty days ahead at noon; parties of four or more should email the restaurant directly. Diners should allow up to two and a half hours for the meal and arrive on time, since arrivals more than fifteen minutes late may not be seated. Children under twelve are not admitted, and all guests are expected to eat from the same menu.

The restaurant sits inside Koreatown, Manhattan, directly under Herald Square and within the entrance to the 34th Street–Herald Square subway station — a neighbourhood of Korean restaurants, karaoke rooms and barbecue houses radiating from 32nd Street, one flight of stairs above the trains that gave Nōksu its unlikely address.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.