Douglas Kim’s New Ramyun Is a French Onion Soup

The bowl Jeju Noodle Bar posted on October 18 is a yellow cup with a browned cap of cheese and a small blue bear on the side. They called it onion ramyun, a vegetarian bowl for the new room in Nolita, inspired by French onion soup. Will Hartman, in The Infatuation on October 27, found long noodles under the cheese. Their caption calls it French inspiration, and a Korean bowl.

Douglas Kim has been explaining that combination since the first shop was still a plan. In July 2017 he told Gothamist that most of the ingredients would not be Korean, and that the food coming off the stove would be. If a chile flake from somewhere else tasted better, he would use it. He also kept the word ramyun out of the name. Call it a noodle bar, he said, and the menu can hold more than soup.

He said it again after the star. In a Michelin Guide film about the 2019 award, he talked about guests who tell him a bowl is not Korean, because the chile comes from Italy. “A chile is a chile,” he said. He is happy if a guest can taste the Korean influence. To MTC Kitchen he added the test he uses in the kitchen. The ramyun begins as a Korean soup. He wants that flavor still in the bowl. Then he tastes it. If he does not want to eat it, it does not go on the menu.

The Greenwich Street room is where that test has been running since September 11, 2017. Pete Wells gave it two stars that December in The New York Times and wrote about the hours in the pot. The broths are boiled and skimmed for hours over meat and bones, a different job from opening a packet of Shin or Samyang. Kim told Business Insider, in 2019, that the skimming is the Korean part. You lift the fat off. A Japanese ramen shop, he said, often stirs it back in. The gochu ramyun, the spicy pork bowl, gets white kimchi so the chile does not take the whole cup. He told MTC Kitchen the noodle should have the chew and the starch of a packaged Korean ramyun, more bite than a Japanese ramen noodle. A supplier makes that noodle for him, and he told Insider they need his say before selling it to another restaurant.

In a Bon Appétit video filmed at Greenwich Street in 2023, Kim put a clock on the noodle. It boils for about 60 seconds, pulled a little early, because the bowl waits. A cook named Jun folds the strands so they lie straight. From the pot to the table, Kim wants about five minutes, before the chew and the heat drop off. He was describing that room. He has not said the Nolita kitchen keeps the same count.

The onion bowl uses that test on a French soup. Cheese over a Korean noodle was already something this kitchen did. Adam Platt, writing in New York magazine in 2018, found a black-truffle bibimmyun dressed like cacio e pepe, with Parmesan, pepper, and truffle shaved at the table. The cup is Soilbaker’s. Kim commissioned the Seoul studio before the West Village opening, and the October 18 post credits them again. On Soilbaker’s page, the note from the chef asks for a bowl thick enough for a busy service and light enough to carry.

Eater reported the second door on October 16, at 204 Elizabeth Street, between Prince and Spring. Hartman found a menu that barely matches Greenwich Street. He describes chicken fried in a batter like funnel cake, with chiles and Thai basil, and a lamb chop cooked as katsu, breaded and fried on the bone. The restaurant posted a chikin finger the day after the onion bowl. On October 21 it posted a rosé myun and did not say what that bowl is. The two chicken plates may be the same dish. Neither write-up says so. The 2019 Michelin guide gave the Greenwich Street counter one star, and the guide’s page still lists that address. The restaurant’s website, checked October 29, does too. The onion ramyun is already on the Elizabeth Street menu.