I don’t think I ever understood how any meat broth could be the basis of a restaurant’s reputation until I ate the dweji gomtang at Okdongsik.
Located on the southeastern outskirts of Koreatown in Manhattan, Okdongsik is nearly a replica of a restaurant in Seoul with the same name, a variation on the name of their chef and founder, Ok Dongsik. Both Okdongsiks are small spaces where everyone is served at a single counter. (The New York location has 13 seats, three more than the South Korean original.) Standing cards display the gloriously simple two-item menu, although there is not much need for this. Everybody gets the dweji gomtang.
Each time an order comes in, a cook behind the counter will place steamed white rice in the bottom of a polished bronze bowl. Pork broth is ladled over the rice and then a few slices of cooked pork are laid across the surface, along with chopped scallions. On the side is a small dish of cabbage kimchi and a rust-colored dab of the chile paste gochuji. This may sound like a pretty spartan soup, but each part of it is excellent, and best of all is the pork broth. I can’t remember the last time I tasted a more delicious liquid that didn’t contain at least some alcohol.
Okdongsik’s soup is said to be made from just aromatic vegetables and muscle, without bones, offal or trimmings that might thicken and cloud the broth. There are no beads of fat on the surface, and its pale gold color suggests wheat beer or the iced barley tea that Okdongsik pours for everyone who sits at the counter. There is no blunt, heavy, animal odor and flavor of the kind that pork stock can give off, especially in its first hour or so on the stove. The broth tastes of beef, chicken, mushrooms or tomatoes — none of which go into making it.
The Manhattan version of Okdongsik arrived in November as a pop-up in collaboration with Hand Hospitality, the group that is on its way to owning or consulting with half of the Korean restaurants in New York. After its initial run ended in April, the restaurant graduated from pop-up to long-term status.
Mr. Ok opened his original restaurant in western Seoul in 2016. At the time, he cooked enough soup each day for 100 bowls. When it had all been sold, lunch was over and the restaurant closed for the day.
Many Korean restaurants excel at one or two dishes, but their menus still offer dozens; loyal customers know exactly which ones to order. Few have menus as radically pared down as Okdongsik’s. Mr. Ok is a super-specialist of a kind the United States rarely produces.
The soup he makes is a combination of two Korean staples: the clear meat soup known as gomtang and soup prepared with boiled rice, called gukbap. Beef gomtang is a staple of both home cooking and restaurants. Dweji gomtang, made with pork, is far less common. Beyond that, though, what sets Mr. Ok’s gomtang apart is the attention he trains on every element, making a bowl of soup seem like more than a bowl of soup. The rice, cooked al dente, isn’t starchy or clumpy, and it has a subtle and slightly floral flavor of its own. The pork, a fat-veined hunk of shoulder from a Berkshire hybrid, is sliced almost as thin as prosciutto from a salumeria in Parma.
Having simmered for hours, the pork is more tender than flavorful. This is where the gochuji comes in; smeared on a slice of meat, it is both savory and smoldering. The menu cards on the counter advise against adding gochuji to the broth. Do whatever you like, but keep in mind that the precisely balanced broth is the whole reason people in Seoul line up and people in New York make reservations to sit at this counter.
If you want more spice, you might find it in the kimchi. Barely fermented, the cabbage is sweet and crisp and juicy; without competition from salt and acid, the tiny pink specks of ground chiles can go straight to work lighting small fires on your tongue.
If you want more meat, you can double the portion of pork for an additional $8. (The standard size is $18.)
And if you want more to eat, there is that other item on the menu: mandoo. They are almost as delicate as the soup, their fillings of pork, tofu and glass noodles half-visible beneath diaphanously thin and satiny wrappers.
Whatever you order, it is almost impossible to make a meal at Okdongsik last more than an hour. If it is evening, you will have the option of walking through the door at the far end of the counter. I did this one night and learned that a small, unmarked, windowless cocktail bar — scrolled woodwork, vintage glassware, shelves of gin — had been behind the door all along.
Another time, I went in the other direction, out the front door. Out on the sidewalk, I found that I was experiencing something like the exact opposite of indigestion. The Korean word for this sensation is siwonhan-mat, a sense of pleasurable well-being from having eaten a light, carefully balanced meal. I learned this later. At the time, all I knew was that I felt great.
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