How Hand Hospitality Contributed to the Rise of Korean Food in America

For more than a decade, New York’s Hand Hospitality has built a restaurant empire of chic, Korean-led concepts that tap into high-level cooking that’s made Seoul a global culinary capital. In doing so, they’ve helped make New York City one of the most exciting cities for Korean cuisine — and helped establish Korean cooking as one of the most dynamic forces in American dining today.

Hand Hospitality’s journey started in 2011, when founder Kihyun Lee opened the Korean gastropub Take31. A graduate of New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology and a scion of a restaurant family, Lee introduced a fresh perspective to New York’s more traditional Koreatown with cuisine-bending dishes like spicy short rib lasagna and pork belly rice-crêpe wraps. Crucially, he focused on attracting young, creative Koreans and Korean Americans both as diners and workers. 

After expanding the group with Her name is Han and its first Japanese concept, Izakaya Mew, Lee invited Keisuke Oku to join as a partner, along with Jinan Choi and Alex Park, both former Take31 servers. Kyungrim Kim, the group’s CEO, also started out as a server, at Her name is Han; she first became the group’s in-house accountant and rose to lead the company in 2022. The group has an expression, Kim says: “Bring your hand, grab another hand, and celebrate together. We’ve had people who’ve stayed with us for five, seven, 10 years. There’s extreme loyalty.”

This homegrown talent now has a portfolio of 20 restaurants and an unusually fluid business model. Hand is the sole owner of 11 concepts, and nine of their restaurants are partnerships with established chefs and hospitality groups. Acting as a hybrid investor/consultant, the company provides business-setup expertise, while the chefs maintain creative control.

This approach has proved remarkably effective, and not just financially. Hand helped 2019 F&W Best New Chef Junghyun Park and his partner, Ellia, launch their restaurants Atoboy and Atomix. (The latter first hit the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2021 and last year reached No. 8.) 2023 F&W Best New Chef Eunji Lee’s pastry-shop-as-art-gallery, Lysée, is also a Hand project, where diners can eat sublime, celadon-hued leek quiches or corn mousse cakes fashioned to mimic ears of corn. Chef Hoyoung Kim’s cooking at Moono epitomizes the adventurousness of Korean food under Hand Hospitality’s umbrella in dishes like scallops with agar jelly and apple, and a bowl of anchovy broth with noodles and tiny cubes of foie gras. And this spring, Hand transferred chef Shin Chang-ho’s fine-dining Joo Ok from Seoul’s Plaza Hotel to New York’s neon-lit Koreatown. “We are risk takers,” Kyungrim Kim says simply.

Last year, Hand also imported three casual concepts from Korea: bulgogi-focused Samwoojung, Korean soul-food spot Hojokban, and Okdongsik. The last focuses on a single lesser-known dish — dweji gomtang, a delicate pork and rice soup — and Kyungrim Kim says it’s primed for expansion to other American cities. “We were amazed that this one menu item worked [so well] in New York,” she says.

As a result, in the near term, Hand is pouring its energy into growing Okdongsik, and they’re also exploring new chef partnerships. As goes Hand Hospitality, so goes Korean food in America, if their success in New York is any indication. “We have a team of creative people who are passionate about opening new brands, restaurants, and pop-ups,” Kyungrim Kim says. “There’s so much more potential for Korean food.”