Korean Street Food Meets NYC Bodega Culture at Nowon

Nowon’s “chopped cheese” rice cakes with spiced beef, soy-pickled jalapeño, parmesan, and garlic breadcrumbs, and a Rock the Bells cocktail with gin, bell pepper, strawberry, and yuzu. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Take comforting Korean rice cakes and mix them with the flavors of a New York City bodega chopped cheese sandwich, throw in an old-school hip-hop soundtrack, and you’ve got Korean-American restaurant Nowon. The New York-based restaurant, expanding to Boston’s Seaport District on April 15, is a nostalgic melding of two cultures and cuisines, courtesy of South Korean-born chef and founder Jae Lee, who moved from Seoul to New York City at eight.

Nowon. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Nowon’s “chopped cheese” rice cakes dish is the perfect entry point to understanding what Lee’s restaurant is all about. “I wanted to create a dish that really represented Korean street food culture and New York street food culture,” says Lee, who opened the first location of Nowon in the East Village in 2019, expanding to Bushwick in 2023. “In Korea, we eat tteokbokki in the street—these chewy, pillowy rice cakes served in red spicy sauce with fish cakes and hard-boiled egg. In New York, though, chopped cheese sandwiches are what I ate. Rice cakes are a vehicle to bring in flavor, so I wanted to serve them with the flavors of chopped cheese.” The result? A must-try mix of spiced beef, soy-pickled jalapeno, parmesan, and garlic breadcrumbs.

Nowon’s Legendary Cheeseburger with kimchi special sauce, pickles, onion, and “new-school” American cheese. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

The restaurant’s self-described “legendary” cheeseburger—which, to be fair, is excellent—is also a callback to Lee’s childhood: his first taste of McDonald’s after moving to the United States. “I remember eating a Big Mac and falling in love,” says Lee. “That was the best burger I’ve ever had, so I wanted to make a version with a Korean touch.” And a bit more upscale, too: Here, it’s made with high-quality ingredients, he says, like a “new-school American cheese that doesn’t sit on the shelf for months,” locally sourced bread from Cambridge favorite Iggy’s, and special sauce infused with kimchi, which takes two weeks to make.

Dishes like these are complemented by a “moody and sexy” space with tiger-themed decor and a party-like vibe that showcases the music from Lee’s formative years in New York—late 1990s and early 2000s hip-hop and R&B, with music videos from that era projected onto a wall above the kitchen. “It really is a nostalgic thing for me,” he says, hoping the ambiance “hits all the feels” for customers too.

Nowon. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

The menu gets a little musical as well. Two prix fixe options are dubbed “mixtapes,” with a family-style five-course meal called “the e.p.” and a seven-course meal called “the classic.” These are the best way to experience Nowon, says Lee, especially for first-timers or big groups. For one thing, family-style dining is a nod to Asian culture, in which “you don’t really eat separately,” says Lee. “You eat together and share.” Another benefit to the “mixtapes” is that even if you’re unfamiliar with some ingredients on the menu, you don’t have to make any decisions. “Just be prepared to have a good time. Help us help you.”

General Lee’s chicken at Nowon, with the Evil Eye cocktail (hibiscus mezcal, Cocchi Rosa, passionfruit, and wasabi). / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

To start, Nowon Boston’s dinner menu will resemble that of the flagship East Village location. (There won’t be Korean-inspired wood-fired pizzas like at the Bushwick location; Lee happened to inherit a wood-fired oven at that space and decided to keep it. But he does hope to open a Korean-American pizzeria eventually—first in New York, but he’d love to bring it here, too.) Fan favorites include General Lee’s chicken, double-fried boneless thigh with a spicy honey-gochujang glaze, roasted peanuts, and pickled daikon. It’s a nod to Lee’s grandfather, who was a general in the Marines in Korea. Tater tots are a popular pick, too, either with honey garlic butter or curry-spiced. The former are an homage to one of Lee’s favorite Korean snacks, honey butter potato chips.

Nowon’s honey garlic butter Extraordinary Tots. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

On weekends, the brunch menu will look like Bushwick’s. Think: fried chicken and matcha waffles with honey butter; K-town shakshuka with gochujang and rice cakes; and crispy shrimp burgers. And the Boston location will have something new for the restaurant group: weekday lunch. “We’re very excited to build relationships with the local vendors here, especially the fish purveyors,” says Lee. “We want to see what they’ve got, see what they want us to use, and come up with some dishes. We want to do our takes on some Boston classics with a Korean touch. Clam chowder, lobster rolls—there are options there, definitely.”

Marketing itself as a gastropub, Nowon has a fun drink menu, too, with cocktails like a black sesame-infused take on an espresso martini, or the refreshing Rock the Bells, with Thai basil and bell pepper-infused gin, strawberry liqueur, and yuzu. There’s plenty of soju—try a flight—as well as some wines and beers (including a couple from South Korea). There are a handful of zero-proof options, too, including mixed drinks made with as much care as their boozy counterparts.

Some of Nowon’s artwork combines the restaurant’s tiger mascot with inspiration from Korean playing cards called Hwatu. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

For a restaurant with inspirations so strongly rooted in South Korea and New York, why expand to Boston? Lee fell hard for the Seaport’s energy. “I was so amazed [at the neighborhood],” says Lee. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A diverse culture, so lively. The energy, the hard-working people. I was like, ‘I have to be here.’” Wherever you find hard-working people, you find people who love food, he says. “You need a place to go out and dine and drink, hang out, wind down after work,” he says. “That’s the place I want it to be.”

Nowon’s summer corn ribs with herb-lime remoulade. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

While Lee doesn’t have partners or investors at his two New York locations, he has partnered with Flying Lion Hospitality Group for the Boston project. (That group is behind the newly opened Indian gastropub Don’t Tell Aunty in Back Bay, Madras Dosa Company, which is steps from Nowon, and more.) It’s not exactly a franchise, Lee says, but more of a licensing deal. “We trained [the Nowon Boston] leadership team in New York for about a month, and we’re here with my team from New York to help open, but [Flying Lion] is going to be operating. We’ll be doing check-ins and helping out with whatever they need. It’s never the same opening a restaurant in different cities; you have to adjust and tweak to fit in with what the neighborhood needs.”

Nowon. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Paying attention to what the Seaport needs extends to operating hours, says Lee. While the restaurant will start with a schedule of 5 to 11 p.m. (midnight on weekends), he’s hoping to eventually stay open until at least 2 a.m. to give the neighborhood what he sees as a much-needed late-night option. Those later-night hours, plus lunch and brunch, will probably start after a month or so.

“We hope to be a community staple that’s here for many years,” says Lee, “because although I am Korean, the food here fits every palate.” He envisions Nowon as the backdrop for everything from work lunches to date nights, anniversaries to birthday celebrations. “Breakups can happen here—although I hope not! Proposals can happen here. We just want to be a great restaurant and bar for the community.”

A spread of food at Nowon. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Opening April 15. 119 Seaport Blvd., Seaport District, Boston, nowonusa.com.