Octo – a Korean remix of Peking duck, gold leaf and all

On the northeastern edge of Koreatown, a block up from the barbecue counters of 32nd Street, Octo is built around a cuisine New York has rarely taken seriously: Korean-Chinese cooking, the hybrid repertoire Chinese migrants reworked for Korean tables from the late nineteenth century onward. It opened in early 2024 — OCTO has only been open since January 9th — the work of Steve and Christina Jang, the family behind New Wonjo, a barbecue said to be the oldest in Koreatown, founded in 1993. In the kitchen, chef Segeun Song, who previously worked at a Korean Chinese restaurant in Seoul called Palais de Chine, builds an à la carte menu around black-bean noodles, sweet-and-sour tangsuyuk, soup dumplings dotted with caviar, and a whole Peking duck finished with shaved black truffle and gold leaf. Octo is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, without a star, at the restaurant's moderate $ price level — recognition for a cuisine too often dismissed as fast, everyday comfort food.

01The room and the setting

Walk past the host stand and the room opens into something built for groups: soaring ceilings, oversize Asian artwork on the walls, and row after row of red leather booths wrapped around an open kitchen that stays in view from almost every seat, in an ultra-large dining room with lofty ceilings, oversized elegant Asian art, red leather booths, and a vast open kitchen visible from every seat.

Two private rooms sit behind the main dining room: the Starry Night Room, which seats up to twelve guests at a single long table, and the larger, partition-walled Paradise Room, built for up to twenty. Opened into one, the pair can hold 34 seated guests or 40 standing.

02The chef

Segeun Song runs the kitchen. Before Octo, he worked in Chinese restaurants in South Korea, Australia, Singapore, and other locations in Southeast Asia, including the stint in Seoul at Palais de Chine. That path shows in a menu that reaches past Korean-Chinese standards into Cantonese and Hong Kong cuisine, northern Chinese specialties from Beijing, and the food of Shanghai, reinterpreted for a Korean table.

Insider tip

Selected in the MICHELIN Guide; book the Peking Duck Black two days ahead; closed Mondays; two private rooms seat up to 34.

03The cooking

The cuisine itself has its own history: Octo's own account traces it to Chinese migrants who settled in Korea from the late nineteenth century and reworked their cooking for a Korean palate, producing dishes — jajangmyeon, tangsuyuk, jjamppong — that generations of Koreans now count as their own. Octo treats those dishes as a starting point rather than a museum piece. Its kimchi soup dumplings swap the plain Shanghai wrapper for a bright orange one holding a sweet-and-sour broth, pork, cabbage kimchi and Thai chiles — a version one critic judged close to a complete remake of the Shanghai original, a more complete remake of this Shanghai standard, with a bright orange wrapper, sweet and sour soup, and a spicy punch absent from the mellower originals.

04What to order

Order the duck. The Peking Duck Black is a whole bird lacquered and finished with shaved black truffle and gold leaf, served with minced duck, bamboo shoot, lettuce and mushroom for wrapping — $149.95, reservation only, best ordered two days ahead. A lighter half bird, the Classic Peking Duck, arrives with cucumber, leek, peking sauce and ten pancakes for $54.95. From the dumpling list, the Soup Dumpling carries a dot of caviar in its pork and Thai chili broth ($15.95), and the Truffle Siu Mai wraps pork, prawn and a soft-boiled quail egg around shaved black truffle ($18.95). To share across the table, the Prime Beef Sirloin Tangsuyuk ($44.95) and the Mala Beef Soup — brisket, tofu skin and glass noodles in a Sichuan-peppercorn broth ($25.95) — both hold their own against the duck. On weekdays only, the New York Set lunch bundles Black Pepper Prime Beef Tenderloin, vegetable fried rice, Truffle Siu Mai and three styles of dumpling for $34.95.

05Wine and drinks

The bar list runs wider than the food alone would suggest: Octo offers a full bar menu, with everything from cocktails and Japanese whisky to wine and soju, enough range to carry a table through a whole duck and several rounds of dumplings without repeating a pour.

06The neighbourhood

Octo sits just north of Koreatown's defining strip, the dense block of 32nd Street that runs between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and has long anchored Korean dining in Manhattan. One block north, at 1 East 33rd Street, Octo sits close enough to feel the gravitational pull of that strip but operates in a slightly different register — closer to Murray Hill's office towers than to the karaoke rooms and barbecue smoke of 32nd Street, and an easy walk from Herald Square.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.