Yuju’s specializes in the rich, milky beef bone soup known as seollangtang, and it’s served here the traditional way: beef bones boiled for hours to extract the creamy white collagen, strips of brisket and thin white noodles added later, and DIY helpings of salt and chopped scallions so you can season the soup to your liking. The bossam (tender boiled pork belly wraps), jokbal (pork trotters), and oyster dolsot bibimbap are also hits here. Enjoy them in homey digs surrounded by hand-written menu specials taped to the walls.

Bonjuk is the temple to jook, with 25 versions of rice porridge each as soul-satisfying as the next. For something spicy and deluxe, order the kimchi and octopus jook; for traditional, get the abalone; for super homey (what parents make for their kids on sick days), get the ground beef and vegetables. In every jook, the rice and hefty portions of the non-rice components have fused together to become one large steaming bowl of Korean comfort food.

Byung Chun specializes in daily house-made soondae (blood sausage stuffed with noodles), doling it out in various preparations: grilled hot at the table for a crackly snap of the casing; stir-fried with gochujang, veggies and noodles; or in an unctuous soup (the kind that solidifies in the fridge) served with gochugaru paste and scallions for seasoning the broth, and a salt-and-pepper mix for dipping in the cut discs of sausage. Soondae is a popular late-night street food in South Korea so it makes sense that Byung Chun Soondae is open 24-seven. Also try the bossam, stir-fried web-foot octopus, and bean sprout soup.

Local regulars hit up this lunch spot for a splendid menu of soul foods intrinsic to the Korean palate. The bibim guksu, cold spicy noodles, are done the way they’re supposed to: light, slightly sweet, spicy, tangy and umami with ingredients like gochugaru, vinegar, and sesame oil and the fresh crunch of lettuce and bean sprouts in a big metal bowl. But for something heartier, get the gamja tang (pork bone and potato stew) heavy with perilla seed flavor or the oyster jeon, golden-fried handmade mounds of egg batter and oyster. The six-plus banchan dishes offer even more flavors and textures to the ordered dishes — as Korean food traditionally does.

Customers flock to Kum Sung for several reasons — the tender strips of duck grilled with garlic cloves, the mul nengmyeon (noodle soup) with chewy noodles in a tangy, icy beef and radish broth, the soy sauce-marinated crabs, the plethora of perfectly flavored banchan — but the halahbuhji (grandpa’s) kimchi bulgogi is its brothy hallmark that’s hard to find elsewhere in New York. It cooks in a pot on the table: The tanginess of aged kimchi combines with the savory beef rib-eye bulgogi and produces succulent bites in a rich, spicy broth.

Bingsu (shaved ice) is a favorite Korean dessert of the summer. At Coffee Factory, the ice is soft and fluffy, like a million mango-flavored snowflakes gently landing on your tongue. Enjoy that texture in the matcha, strawberry, mango and mitsugaru (sweet mixed grain powder) versions of bingsu, each with its own toppings like mini tteok (rice cakes) and ice cream.

Long a favorite among Korean locals, Hahm Ji Bach offers a well-executed generalist menu that fulfills all sorts of cravings from thick slabs of pork belly grilled at the table to spicy stir-fries, bibimbap, and steaming pots of soups and soups for individual or sharing. Expect a wait at peak dinner times; even the street structure gets packed.

One of the first restaurants in the area is Yuk Jun Gui, and although it offers all the barbecue classics, it specializes in a rarity outside of Korea: grilled eel. Here, it’s cooked over a wood fire by an eemo (auntie) who’s deft with her grilling, knowing exactly when to flip each filleted chunk to the other side. The outcome is perfection: eel that’s meaty, slightly springy, and quite smoky with a char all around the exterior. As with the more mainstream beef barbecue, create lettuce wraps with it. But also leave room for daechang (intestine). The eemo also grills this superbly, creating chewy and super fatty, melt-in-your-mouth pieces with a golden crust.

If you are starving and need a snack (while you’re waiting for a table elsewhere, perhaps), head to Sommunan Kimbap where you’re in and out in less than two minutes with a warm just-made kimbap in your hands. About 20 kimbap versions include perilla leaf tuna and grilled squid in addition to your common bulgogi. Each roll is heavy with filling, not filler. The amount of rice is spare compared to the julienned burdock, yellow pickled radish, and whichever main filling you choose. In Korean fashion, hot broth is served for umami lubrication between bites.

It looks like an abandoned office building, but Maeil Garden on the ground floor is the go-to spot for charcoal-fired Yangnyum dweji galbi, where even the rib bones are saved for grilling with bonus flecks of charred meat. In Korean fashion, get it with a bowl of nengmyun either as a pairing or a follow-up to the barbecue. Even the bibim naengmyun here has crushed ice that makes for a lusciously lubricated bowl of noodles. The dipping sauce for the jeon (pancakes) like a shredded potato jeon is extra thick with seasoning like gochugaru and scallions. Across three generations, the restaurant has stayed within the family, and as a testament to its duration in a now-crowded Murray Hill, the dining room is spacious, and has a parking lot and back patio.

A destination spot whose charcoal barbecue renown has surpassed the Murray Hill community, Mapo has sadly been weathering its share of troubles since the pandemic; the death of its owner and a temporary closure have cast a pall over the typically lively space. Now reopened, its standout barbecue remains. Over crackling embers, high-quality cuts of galbi or black pork sizzle and yield tender, juicy bites of meat. Don’t skip on the yukgejang here either: the broth is rich and spicy and the soup altogether is loaded with ample amounts of shredded beef, fernbrake fiddleheads, and scallions.

The porky, savory goodness just doesn’t end at Tong Sam Gyup Goo Yi, which is aptly named after samgyupsal (pork belly). The grilling starts off with slabs of pork belly at the top of a domed cast-iron pan (sottukong). As it cooks, the fat drips onto generous helpings of kimchi and bean sprouts laid out towards the bottom of the grill. With anything left over, you can order a fried rice with a choice of fixings like eggs, fish roe, and spam. In true Korean fashion, order the mul nengmyun — cold noodle soup in beefy broth served here in an ice bowl — as a refreshing break from the lardaceous barbecue.

​​One of the hardest decisions to make at a Korean-Chinese joint is always: Should I get jjajangmyun or jjamppong? Many (but not all) places curb your indecisiveness with an offering of both in a divided bowl, and that’s also the case at this local destination. The black bean noodles are savory and saucy, emanating with black beans, pork and onions; the jjamppong is a spicy red noodle soup riddled with shellfish like mussels, shrimp, and squid. Together, it just works. Complement that with tangsuyuk, battered and fried strips of pork or beef topped with a sweet and sour syrup.

Kalguksu houses always present a difficult choice: go with the namesake kalguksu, long knife-cut strands of chewy noodles, or sujebi, flat and wavy slivers of dough torn by hand. It’s a win either way, and Kun Sohn serves them in about 10 different ways. It does the classics right: light with steamed clams, creamy and earthy with ground perilla seeds, or rich with fall-off-the-bone chicken. Other standouts include the large round steamed beef mandu — traditional half moons pinched together at the points — and seafood jeon — super crispy and thick with a smattering of various shellfish. Enjoy your fair share of brightly flavored banchan.