Restaurant Review: Cote 550

Cote 550 brings Korean barbecue with an expense-account swagger to a flashy space on Madison Avenue.Photographs by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New Yorker Save this story Save this story Save this story Save this story You’re reading the Food Scene newsletter, Helen Rosner’s guide to what, where, and how to eat. Sign up to receive it in your inbox.The restaurateur Simon Kim opened Cote in the Flatiron district, in 2017, with an alluring conceit: a marriage of two of the great beef-worshipping restaurant genres, the Korean-barbecue joint and the American steak house. He borrowed Cote’s format from the former, with grills inset into tabletops and a classic Korean menu of meat, marinades, and banchan. From the American steak house, he adopted a certain slick-edged expense-account swagger, with dark-leather décor, a dry-aging program, a serious wine list, and European-inspired hospitality. The name itself carried a double meaning—cote, in Korean, means “flower,” or “essence,” but the word also evokes “côte de boeuf,” the French term for a standing rib roast. Within a year, Kim’s restaurant became the first Korean-barbecue place in the world to earn a Michelin star. In the time since, Kim and his company, Gracious Hospitality Management, have taken Cote global, opening outposts in Miami, Singapore, and Las Vegas—and, as of April, in midtown.

Kim seems constitutionally incapable of doing anything small; his follow-up to the original Cote, the Korean fried-chicken joint COQODAQ, also in Flatiron, became famous almost immediately for its encyclopedic champagne list, created by the group’s beverage director, Victoria James, and for its Golden Nugget, a boneless-chicken bite topped with a generous dollop of caviar. But the newest project is his grandest yet, and he knows it. “This is my Sistine Chapel,” he told Grub Street, referring to the soaring ceilings of 550 Madison, the postmodern tower in which his latest project is housed. Cote 550, as it’s called, makes up just one-third of it; the address is home to three new Gracious Hospitality restaurants, stacked vertically. Cote 550 occupies a moody subterranean space; above it is the more casual Bar Chimera, on the cathedral-like main floor; and on the mezzanine level is a not yet open sushi-omakase counter, to be helmed by the super-chef Masahiro Yoshitake, whose sushi-yas in Tokyo and Hong Kong each have multiple Michelin stars.

Diners enter the complex on Fifty-sixth Street between Fifth and Madison, an area that’s closed to car traffic owing to the presence of Trump Tower on the block’s northwestern corner. Once you’re past the barricades, pylons, and hulking N.Y.P.D. mobile checkpoint, and through the door to Bar Chimera (which you must go through to reach the other restaurants), all that jittery energy doesn’t exactly dissolve, but it does change form, into supercharged biz-cazh happy hour. The room is enormous in every dimension, with a sixty-foot atrium and vast windows overlooking Madison Avenue. From the center, a twenty-three-foot Norfolk-pine tree ascends, looking unavoidably Christmassy, surrounded by plush booths and three distinct, stage-set bar areas: one for Martinis, with mirrored backdrops and icy-white lighting; one for whiskey, warmly lit, with wooden shelves and a rolling ladder; and one dedicated to the vast and rarefied wine list, which includes a vintage Madeira dating to 1835. High up on an interior wall, in jarring contrast with the muted sandstone tones of the rest of the room, is a neon work by the artist Martin Creed proclaiming “DON’T WORRY.” Was I worried? Should I be worried?