Douglas Kim’s Second Noodle Bar Is on Elizabeth Street

Eater says Douglas Kim opened a second noodle bar on Friday, at 204 Elizabeth Street in Nolita, between Prince and Spring. The original room is the one with the Michelin star, at 679 Greenwich Street in the West Village. Kim’s website still lists that address and no other.

He opened there on September 11, 2017, the first restaurant of his own. Two days later he told Eater a Michelin star was something to shoot for. The 2019 guide gave the room one. Michelin’s page still lists it at that counter.

Kim was born in Namwon, in the southwest of Korea, and came to the United States in 1994. In a Michelin Guide interview he described a town ringed by mountains, with meat and mountain vegetables on the table. Seafood took more work to get. His first New York job, in 1999, was at Nobu Downtown in Tribeca. The crowds for that contemporary Japanese cooking shocked him. He wanted Korean restaurants to have a reputation like that.

Before Jeju he cooked at Per Se, and at Zuma, where he said he managed more than 100 people in the kitchen. He had gone to learn how a big restaurant runs. The noodle bar was the one he wanted in his own hands. “It’s a baby restaurant,” he said. “I want it to have my touch.”

He called it Jeju, and the restaurant has explained that word two ways. Eater’s 2017 opening story said Jeju was the island off Korea’s south coast, and the first menu leaned on raw fish. The website now says the word means “skill,” “talent,” or “ability.”

Gochu ramyun is the bowl the guide still describes at the Greenwich Street counter: a pork-bone broth with curly noodles, bean sprouts, and pickled cabbage. Kim has said the noodle has more bite and starch than Japanese ramen, closer to the packaged ramyun people know from Korea. Michelin suggests the counter, so you can watch the bowl come together.

The second room is the one he was describing in 2017, when he told Eater a noodle bar would be easy to duplicate, and that he would start small and grow with a team. Friday’s note gives 204 Elizabeth Street. It does not name a dish. In 2025 the restaurant promised food the West Village room does not serve, and that menu is still not posted. The page that is up is still 679 Greenwich Street.