One of Seoul’s coolest Korean restaurants, Hojokban, opens in LA

Popular South Korean restaurant Hojokban, which made a splash when it opened in New York City in 2023, is coming to Los Angeles’ Arts District at 734 East Third Street in early 2025. The restaurant is best known for twisting on traditional Korean dishes and playfully arranging them to share on social media, including a shin ramyun fried rice that went viral on TikTok, Korean honey chicken, and sliced ​​pork cheek with garlic. Hojokban’s specialty – juicy short ribs cooked sous vide with the flavor of grilled galbi – are served bone-in with an arugula salad.

While the New York branch will operate in partnership with Hand Hospitality, a prolific and influential Korean restaurant group associated with Atoboy, Jua and Lysée, Seoul-based GFFG Hospitality will operate Hojokban in Los Angeles. Hojokban recently popped up at Melody in Virgil Village to drum up interest in the upcoming restaurant. The wine bar was filled with a mix of young Korean Americans and other Los Angeles residents enjoying cold noodle salads with perilla oil and strawberry-flavored hamachi crudo.

Hojokban comes to Los Angeles at a moment when modern Korean food is evolving from a novelty to a bona fide part of the local restaurant scene. Early exponents of the genre include chef Roy Choi’s Pot and Kwang Uh’s first Baroo, as well as the now-closed Koreatown restaurants Hanchic, Kinn and Tokki, which served new-school Korean dishes. Today, places like the more upscale Korean restaurant Yangban, the dynamic Korean takeout spot Danbi and the newest Baroo serve upscale takes on Korean flavors. In Victor Heights, chef Jihee Lee’s Perilla prepares seasonal Korean snacks like gimbap. Korean cuisine in Los Angeles has always been dominated by classic family restaurants serving traditional banchan and prepared foods.

Hojokban

Hojokban

Hojokban, which means a traditional Korean wooden table, serves polished versions of familiar dishes. Main dishes on the menu include a truffle-laden gamja jeon (potato fritter) served like delicate nachos in a casserole dish with truffle mayonnaise; buckwheat noodles tossed in perilla oil; tuna gimbap seasoned with tobiko fish roe; and well-diced yukhoe (beef tartare) seasoned with sweet soy sauce and nori aioli and served with deep-fried lotus root chips.

The East Third Street building will house another GFFG Hospitality concept called Knotted, a cream-filled doughnut shop with 16 locations in South Korea. The pink-and-yellow-themed shop has served over 11 million doughnuts in 2022 and showcases its colorful doughnuts in illuminated glass pastry containers. Knotted will open around the same time as Hojokban in 2025.

Amber Koh, director of brand strategy, will oversee Hojokban and Knotted’s Los Angeles operations. She tells Eater that GFFG Hospitality spent years looking for the ideal location before landing in the Arts District next to Michelin-starred omakase restaurant 715 Sushi. (The restaurant group felt that opening in Koreatown would draw unfair comparisons to the traditional mom-and-pop shops that already serve great food.) Hojokban aims to appeal to Korean Americans and non-Koreans alike, but stays true to classic flavors—ones that Los Angeles residents know and recognize.

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