Chef Sungchul Shim opens third Hell’s Kitchen restaurant in former Staples as local Asian culture flourishes

From the outside, Gui looks unremarkable. Michelin-starred chef Sungchul Shim’s Korean steakhouse is located on a busy stretch of 8th Avenue in a former Staples store. But inside, any memories of office supplies have long since faded, replaced by Shim’s biggest and most extravagant project yet.

The restaurant is massive, spanning 10,000 square feet, two floors and three spaces – the cocktail lounge Bar 92, the circular dining room Hwaro and the steakhouse floor. Gui is gearing up for next month and Shim is excited to join a growing community of new Asian restaurants in Hell’s Kitchen that includes his other nearby restaurants.

“This is like my lifelong dream,” Shim said. “It’s very exciting.”

On the ground floor of Gui’s at 776 8th Avenue, you’ll find Bar 92, whose back wall is surrounded by a massive slab of black lacquer inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Here, Shim aims to showcase variations on classic cocktails by New York bartender and beverage director Gelo Honrade.

Upstairs is Hwaro (화로), a circular dining room named after the term for a Korean stove. Its menu and design are emblematic of Korean hospitality: guests sit in a circle around the central cooking station — similar to another Shim restaurant, Mari — and Shim plans to serve traditional Korean dishes with “global influences.”

Gui’s huge dining room overlooks 8th Avenue. The space feels incredibly quiet – no sound from the busy main street penetrates the walls. The restaurant is big enough to get lost in, and bigger than Shim’s other Hell’s Kitchen restaurants Mari and Kochi, both of which have received a Michelin star.

It also took a long time, said Shim, who spent more than two years looking for the perfect location and months more negotiating the price. Jiwon Kim, Gui’s culinary director, said Shim traveled to South Korea more than five times to personally select Gui’s silverware, tableware and decorations.

Transforming a former Staples restaurant into an upscale restaurant took time, but also gave Shim a blank canvas to create his dream restaurant, Gui’s general manager Jason Lui said. “He had to personally invest himself and be an architect in some ways to create this space,” Lui said.

Gui will join a growing number of Asian restaurants in Hell’s Kitchen. Popular Japanese udon restaurant Raku opened its fourth neighborhood location for sit-down dining this month after offering noodles for takeout and delivery since June. Since 2021, several omakase restaurants have opened here – including Omakase by Korami, Tatsuda Omakase and Sushiichi.

The neighborhood has long been home to many popular Thai spots, said longtime resident Huey Kim. But a handful of new spots have popped up in recent years, including Thai comfort food spot LumLum, which opened in 2022, and the newer Southern Thai restaurant Chalong. Plus, there are a few other new Korean spots that have opened since the 2020 pandemic, like Korean taco spot UT47, fried chicken spot Koji Chicken and fusion restaurant Bulbap Grill.

Hell’s Kitchen is also home to a number of new upscale restaurants, such as Chinese tasting menu restaurant Yingtao and Chi, one of the more expensive Chinese spots on 9th Avenue. The influx of new Chinese restaurants even prompted Eater to dub the neighborhood a “second Chinatown” last year.

The growing fine dining scene has created more competition for Gui, but chef Kim said he is happy about it.

“I’ve always said that our only competition is ourselves because Kochi and Mari are so close to each other. And now we definitely have more competition, and that’s a good thing,” Kim said. “Food has evolved so much. When we opened Kochi, there was only one deli on each block. That’s now becoming more restaurants with more choices and more varied cuisines.”

The opening of new restaurants is great news for Evelyn Yang, an activist, Hell’s Kitchen mom and wife of politician Andrew Yang.

“We have been really excited about the new selection of Asian restaurants in the area and have visited many of them – often at Chai, Chi, DD Soup Dumpling and Mari,” said Yang.

And it’s not just Hell’s Kitchen’s dining scene that’s growing, but the neighborhood itself. According to census data, Hell’s Kitchen’s population grew nearly 30 percent in the decade leading up to 2020, with the proportion of Asian residents increasing 74 percent – the largest increase of any ethnic group – and the neighborhood becoming more diverse overall, Patch reported.

That diversity is one of the reasons Shim opened his third restaurant in the neighborhood. He wants Gui to be a destination for both Hell’s Kitchen residents and tourists, despite the higher prices.

“There’s a lot of diversity here, a lot of young people and then there are those who have lived here for 20 or 30 years,” Shim said. “We’re trying to do something different than what they currently have.”