The executive chef at Jungsik, the two-star Korean restaurant in the former Chanterelle space, was the recipient of this year’s Blancpain New York Young Chef Award, announced this week by Michelin. Suyoung Park started cooking as a sous chef at Jungsik in Seoul, came to New York in 2018 and within a year was executive chef here. (Blancpain is the French watch manufacturer and they now partner with Michelin, which actually makes tires, for a series of special chef awards.)

None of the city’s Michelin-starred restaurants got downgraded this year, despite the turbulence — or maybe I should say because of it — in the restaurant industry these past months. Our list of stars continues to be Jungsik and Atera with two; Bâtard, Crown Shy and L’Appart with one; and Vestry, the new Soho seafood spot that just opened in October, scored one star as a newcomer. (That’s on my list of New Kids. The chef is Shaun Hergatt, who got a Michelin star for his restaurant in midtown, the now closed Juni. And before that he had SHO Shaun Hergatt on Broad, until 2012.)

And another update on Jungsik: the restaurant’s star pastry chef, Eunji Lee, left at the end of March. I interviewed her in early March 2020, and unfortunately sat on it, waiting for the world to open — and now it’s too late. So here are a couple of my pics, which I just loved and can’t leave to rot on my hard drive. The video of her preparing her strawberry tart is so soothing it’s better than Valium.