Atomix

New York is a city of layered cultures, each with rooms that carry its identity. Japanese, Chinese, Thai — a New Yorker recognizes each one before reading the menu. Korean had no such shorthand. Working with JP and Ellia Park, we held that question for a long time, and chose to carry not the traditional forms themselves but what they stand for. The answer took the form of a chef’s counter inside a hundred-year-old townhouse in Midtown East, where food, service, the guest and their culture meet — carried by many hands, and set down in front of the person it was made for.