Korean Seafood Is the Specialty at Musaek in Midtown
A specialty of the South Korean coastal city Sokcho, mulhoe is fish stew that’s perfect for summer. Spicy raw fish is served chilled with a cold soup and, of course, cold noodles. At Musaek, on the eastern fringe of Koreatown, the soup is served on the side and the noodles are bouncy konjac. “It’s basically like a seafood sashimi with cold broth. It’s so savory and so refreshing,” says the restaurant’s co-owner, Danny Hanh. “It’s tangy, sweet, and has some acid from vinegar and lemon — you pour it over the seafood.”
The man behind the mulhoe is chef Lenny Moon, who worked at Jungsik and was the executive chef at Hortus. Now he’s joined up with the trio behind the fledgling Urimat Hospitality Group, which has opened three spots this year, all in a 30,000-square-foot space stretching from 32nd Street to 31st Street. The others are Howoo, a beef-centric Korean BBQ spot, and Dubuhaus, with homemade tofu. Here, the focus is on seafood.
Occupying the 12,000-square-foot basement below the two other restaurants, Musaek is reached through a long hallway. It’s dimly lit and attractive with dark-green banquettes flanking a U-shaped bar at the center of the room. The ribbed glass above blurs the bottles and there’s muted light coming from under the bar’s countertop. It’s a place where, Hanh says, they want to introduce seafood dishes that are otherwise not often seen in the city’s Korean restaurants.
In addition to the mulhoe, that includes jiritang, a type of monkfish soup. The port city of Masan is known for monkfish, Hanh says, and it’s associated with the spicy monkfish stew called agujjim. Here, the jiritang broth is flavored with ginger and large Korean green onions. Samhap comes with octopus that’s braised in dashi and sliced thin, stir-fried kimchee, tiny fried enoki mushrooms, and ricotta ssamjang. Wando seaweed is made into a jelly topped with uni, ikura, and soy sauce; chungmu gimbap comes with fried green onion, spicy squid, and radish kimchi.
While there’s a bit of nostalgia on the menu, too — in the form of deep-fried shrimp heads meant to evoke Seukkang shrimp crackers, a favorite childhood snack of the chefs — not everything is pulled from the peninsula: Moon also makes fish and chips with shishamo, a type of smelt that Koreans call “ice fish,” that’s vodka- and beer-battered and deep-fried. These are small fish, packed with roe and edible bones. Along with the potatoes, which are steamed then fried, the dish is brightened up with a white kimchee slaw.
All of the fried food will, the group hopes, get people drinking cocktails. John Roel Carp, who worked at the nearby bar Osamil Upstairs, designed a menu of drinks that are all clarified and made in batches. They’re mostly made with Korean ingredients, too: Think basil-infused vodka with hallabong or Jeju mandarin; tequila with barley tea; and Toki whiskey with perilla leaf that’s baked and dried. The idea, Hanh says, is to “share the flavors” between the bar and dining room.