The restaurateur Simon Kim opened Cote within the Flatiron district, in 2017, with an alluring conceit: a wedding of two of the nice beef-worshipping restaurant genres, the Korean-barbecue joint and the American steak home. He borrowed Cote’s format from the previous, with grills inset into tabletops and a traditional Korean menu of meat, marinades, and banchan. From the American steak home, he adopted a sure slick-edged expense-account swagger, with dark-leather décor, a dry-aging program, a critical wine listing, and European-inspired hospitality. The title itself carried a double which means—cote, in Korean, means “flower,” or “essence,” however the phrase additionally evokes “côte de boeuf,” the French time period for a standing rib roast. Inside a yr, Kim’s restaurant turned the primary Korean-barbecue place on the earth to earn a Michelin star. Within the time since, Kim and his firm, Gracious Hospitality Administration, have taken Cote international, opening outposts in Miami, Singapore, and Las Vegas—and, as of April, in midtown.
Kim appears constitutionally incapable of doing something small; his follow-up to the unique Cote, the Korean fried-chicken joint COQODAQ, additionally in Flatiron, turned well-known virtually instantly for its encyclopedic champagne listing, created by the group’s beverage director, Victoria James, and for its Golden Nugget, a boneless-chicken chew topped with a beneficiant dollop of caviar. However the latest undertaking is his grandest but, and he is aware of it. “That is my Sistine Chapel,” he informed Grub Road, referring to the hovering ceilings of 550 Madison, the postmodern tower during which his newest undertaking is housed. Cote 550, because it’s referred to as, makes up simply one-third of it; the tackle is house to 3 new Gracious Hospitality eating places, stacked vertically. Cote 550 occupies a moody subterranean area; above it’s the extra informal Bar Chimera, on the cathedral-like most important flooring; and on the mezzanine stage is a not but open sushi-omakase counter, to be helmed by the super-chef Masahiro Yoshitake, whose sushi-yas in Tokyo and Hong Kong every have a number of Michelin stars.
Diners enter the advanced on Fifty-sixth Road between Fifth and Madison, an space that’s closed to automotive visitors owing to the presence of Trump Tower on the block’s northwestern nook. When you’re previous the barricades, pylons, and hulking N.Y.P.D. cell checkpoint, and thru the door to Bar Chimera (which you have to undergo to succeed in the opposite eating places), all that jittery power doesn’t precisely dissolve, but it surely does change kind, into supercharged biz-cazh completely happy hour. The room is big in each dimension, with a sixty-foot atrium and huge home windows overlooking Madison Avenue. From the middle, a twenty-three-foot Norfolk-pine tree ascends, wanting unavoidably Christmassy, surrounded by plush cubicles and three distinct, stage-set bar areas: one for Martinis, with mirrored backdrops and icy-white lighting; one for whiskey, warmly lit, with wood cabinets and a rolling ladder; and one devoted to the huge and rarefied wine listing, which features a classic Madeira relationship to 1835. Excessive up on an inside wall, in jarring distinction with the muted sandstone tones of the remainder of the room, is a neon work by the artist Martin Creed proclaiming “DON’T WORRY.” Was I anxious? Ought to I be anxious?
