One of the best burgers in the city is most certainly the smash burger at Nowon. It’s called, not immodestly, the Legendary Cheeseburger, and features two expertly charred patties, doctored with a top-secret umami seasoning, American cheese, a special sauce with kimchi and Kewpie mayo, and house-made pickles, on a sesame-seed bun. It’s the anchor of both locations of Nowon, a Korean American pocha, or gastropub, named after the district in Seoul where its chef and owner, Jae Lee, lived until he was eight.
For Lee, Nowon was hard-won, though rather meteorically. In 2017, the chef, who had cooked his way up the ladder for Floyd Cardoz, Masaharu Morimoto, and Dale Talde, landed an executive-chef position at Hotel 50 Bowery’s Rice & Gold. He hadn’t yet turned thirty. “I was too comfortable,” he told me. “I need to be in the fire.” So he quit, and, in April, 2019, started a pop-up in the East Village’s Black Emperor bar, selling burgers, chopped-cheese rice cakes, fried chicken. “I was a one-man show, selling five burgers a night,” Lee said. “I had to sell my prize possession, my Panerai watch, just to have rent money.” Then a Gothamist article came out: “Random East Village Bar Now Serving One of NYC’s Greatest Burgers.” Lee’s pop-up blew up: “I started selling hundreds of burgers overnight.”
Ricotta toast and honey-butter tater tots are welcome accompaniments to the kimchi-laced Legendary Cheeseburger.Photographs by Justin J. Wee for The New Yorker
On the strength of that burger, Lee met with potential investors for his own restaurant, but when he couldn’t cite any examples of his concept—there was no Korean American pocha to point to—they declined to fund it. So Lee set up shop on his own, and launched Nowon, in the East Village (507 E. 6th St.), just months after the fateful article. This summer, he opened a second location, in Bushwick. Where the East Village room is all warm wood and cozy, if high-decibel, bar vibes, the Bushwick spot reads at once sleek and gritty, in black and red hues, Destiny’s Child videos projected on the wall, Tyler, the Creator blasting on the speakers.
The eclectic drink menu includes Korean rice beer, soju, and zero-proof cocktails.Photographs by Justin J. Wee for The New Yorker
Alongside an intriguingly eclectic drink menu—listing obscure Korean rice beer, lemongrass- and miso-inflected mocktails, and soju galore—Lee wisely retains his hits. Mandatory orders include a burger (a version with actual truffle rivals the Legendary); a killer gochujang-glazed fried-chicken sandwich; crisp honey-butter tater tots; and those chopped-cheese rice cakes, a variation of tteokbokki, swimming in a velvety beef-and-American-cheese-fortified gravy.
Lee’s wonderful japchae, helpfully named Vegan Shroom Noods, bathes translucent sweet-potato glass noodles in a brown-sugar-soy sauce. Wood-fired pizzas, new for the Bushwick location, skew sweet, with a deliciously complex, chewy crust. Lee told me that he does think about an empire, but not the Roman kind: “I want to build a Korean American restaurant-bar empire, throughout the nation.” (Dishes $11-$27.) ♦
