Monday, January 1, 2024 — I made time for one hype burger during our recent NYC holiday trip, and — it wasn’t great.
Nowon is a Korean-American gastropub with two New York locations. We dined at the East Village outpost on 6th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B. Having grown up six blocks away from Alphabet City and later as an adult living on its northern border at 14th Street and Avenue A, it’s my favorite neighborhood in New York. Countless memories of long nights at bars — my wife and I had our very first date at the former Musical Box (Easter egg!) bar on Avenue B between 13th and 14th Streets — and dozens of terrific meals, but unfortunately this wasn’t one of them.
Nowon hit my radar on the heels of a handful of highly influential NYC food influencers — including Jeremy Jacobowitz; The Infatuation‘s Bryan Kim, Neha Talreja, Willa Morre, and Kenny Yang; and by Shauna Lyons in The New Yorker, arguably the city’s ultimate high-brow cultural aesthete — recommending the burger as one of the city’s best. No greater sign of a New York restaurant having a moment than threatening you with a $125 fee if you need to cancel and don’t provide ample advanced notice!
Digression aside, our party of four was sat at a too-small roundtop despite there being a more generously sized rectangular table available. My brother and I were both excited to try what the restaurant calls its “Legendary Cheeseburger.”
The sandwich consists of two smashed patties, pickles, kimchi, and kimchi sauce, and…it was incredibly underwhelming. While I’m certainly willing to give a place the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to a bad night, the burger was straight-up boring. The sesame-seed bun was uninspiring and borderline stale, and the patties were *way* overcooked. Biting into this thing was akin to chewing on a hockey puck. I thought for sure the kimchi sauce would moisten this arid meat-delivery vehicle, but no such luck — this was one of the drier burgers I can recall having in some time. I love a juicy burger, and this was the antithesis. Lastly, the patties were on the small side, and being smashed meant the sandwich had no heft. Maybe many New Yorkers prefer a daintier hamburger, but if there’s one “bigger in Texas” stereotype I’ve wholeheartedly adopted during my decade in the Lone Star State it’s the desire for burger stacks so massive you need to unhinge your jaw to consume them.
Nowon’s saving grace for us that night was that everything else we ordered — pickled cucumbers and fried chicken for appetizers, and kimchee and mushroom rice veggie dish entrees selected by our significant others — was delicious.
Parenthetically, during my previous trip home to NYC this last summer I made a point to try 7th Street Burger, another smashburger joint which has also garnered its share of hype. It was enjoyable — certainly juicier than Nowon’s — but I’m not sure it brought much more to the table than one might find at Shake Shack.
Thus far in the Houston-NYC burger wars, H-Town is running circles around my hometown. While it may not be an entirely apples-to-apples to comparison, I can’t help but evaluate everything against burger-chan, my 2023 Top Burger winner, and eating Nowon’s dry, joyless burger made me appreciate just how fortunate Houstonians are to enjoy the thoughtful, intentional, and heartfelt experience Willet and Diane deliver every day.
Nowon rating: 1 out of 5 patties 😬
Best Burgers Near Me 