A MICHELIN-STARRED KOREAN RESTAURANT HAS FLIPPED INTO SOMETHING NEW

Joomak Banjum closed at 312 Fifth Avenue, between West 31st and 32nd streets, due to “skyrocketing” rent, but there’s more to the story: Jiho Kim is looking for a new space for Joomak Banjum 2.0, while former co-owner Sarah Kang, has opened a new restaurant in its place. Beut is an all-day modern Korean restaurant serving homey lunch sets and eight-course, seafood-heavy tasting menu dinners ($125) based on Korean royal court cuisine. It’s slated to debut on April 10.

Kang tapped chef Sang Hoon Jeong, from the now-closed Hwaban and Antoya to lead Beut’s kitchen. The lunch sets will focus on sotbap, clay pot rice with options like beef and fish, served with soup and assorted banchan. For dinner, courses include: mulhwe, raw fish in kimchi sorbet with dongchimi (white kimchi broth) poured table side; lobster maewoon tang (spicy soup); and charred abalone imported from Jeju Island and cooked in a perilla seed-infused rice soup topped with caviar, as well as sinseollo, a deluxe Korean hot pot that was once a fixture of Joseon Dynasty-era royal court cuisine and makes a rare appearance in NYC. — Caroline Shin, contributor

Suzanne Cupps steps out on her own

Suzanne Cupps led the kitchens at Untitled. at the Whitney Museum and salad bar Dig’s foray into full-service, 232 Bleecker. Both have since closed, but now Cupps is opening something of her own. On April 4, she will unveil Lola’s — a reference for the word for grandma in Tagalog — mixing Southern and Asian influences with the kitchen expertise she’s honed in New York. Think: sesame milk bread with pimento cheese; egg noodles with chile crisp; and ribs with baked beans, plus a flan with citrus marmalade. It’s located at 2 W. 28th Street, at Fifth Avenue, in Flatiron.

Caroline Schiff is leaving Gage & Tollner

Schiff is leaving Gage & Tollner, the restaurant and Brooklyn icon in Downtown Brooklyn, for which she was nominated for the Outstanding Pastry Chef by the James Beard Awards in 2022. Her last day making baked Alaskas and other midcentury treats is March 31. She’s decamping to open a place of her own, a diner of sorts, that will enable her to extend to savory — though no lease has been signed as yet.

One of D.C.’s hottest restaurants will be in town

Lutèce, Georgetown’s “Neo-bistro,” will arrive in New York on April 2, for a one-night-only dinner held at Italian restaurant Forsythia, on the Lower East Side. A four-course mash-up of menus — think “oeuf mayo, but with parm crema” — is bookable for $150 per person.

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