07-08-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Triumphant Rise of the Steakbar
The other night, I was standing at the bar at Alphaville in Bushwick, listening to someone botch my favorite karaoke song, when out came a perfect-looking steak: bright red in the middle and drowned in a caramel-colored pan sauce. It wasn't a mirage. It was Lori Jayne, a restaurant operating out of the bar's kitchen, turning Alphaville into some kind of a dive bar steakhouse hybrid.
I'll always have a soft spot for the porterhouse at Gallaghers. But some of my favorite steaks right now are found in strange places: natural wine bars, Mexican restaurants and, yes, graffiti-covered Bushwick booths. The steaks at these venues aren't just more affordable — most of the time they're more interesting. They trade creamed spinach for piquillo peppers and make béarnaise sauces with Korean hot mustard. (Heck, that night in Bushwick, my steak came with chopsticks.)
When the chef Sam Yoo took over his parents' Midtown restaurant, New York Kimchi, last year, he had an identity problem. The downstairs operated as a Korean steakhouse, but most people got stuck drinking kimchi martinis at Golden Hof, the ground floor bar. (Hof refers to casual bars popularized in Korea in the 1970s.) 'People heard 'steakhouse' and thought it was fancy,' Yoo told me during a meal last month. When he rebranded as a 'Korean bar and grill' last month, business increased overnight, he said.
When I returned to Golden Hof post-pivot, I was relieved to see that his steaks had survived the rebrand — and that you can now order them with Korean corn cheese and the viral honey butter pancakes from Yoo's downtown restaurant, Golden Diner. You can order strip steaks and rib eyes as Korean barbecue with ssam and banchan — but there's something charming about dunking those same meats into hot mustard béarnaise sauce with a side of fries. This is a Korean American steakhouse in its truest form, where poached lobster, kimchi jiggae, chopped salad and japchae all happily share a menu.
16 West 48th Street (Fifth Avenue), Midtown
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