Hasung Lee spent five years getting Oyatte right. He changed locations. He refined his vision. He built a relationship with Crown Daisy Farm in upstate New York, securing exclusive access to vegetables that most chefs can only dream about. On May 5, 2026, it finally opened in Murray Hill—and the patience pays off. This is a restaurant built on control, intention, and an almost obsessive commitment to flavor.
Lee's résumé reads like a greatest hits of fine dining: The French Laundry, Atomix, Geranium in Copenhagen, Gramercy Tavern. He became a household name last year as the runner-up on Netflix's Culinary Class Wars Season 2, where he was called the "Culinary Monster." But those credentials matter less than what he's doing now. Oyatte is the first full expression of his culinary voice, unmediated by any other chef's vision or restaurant's brand identity. It's his first chance to be entirely himself, and he's not wasting it.
The eight-course tasting menu hinges on that farm partnership with Brett Ellis, the former head farmer at The French Laundry. Lee controls the size, taste, flavor, and seasonality of every vegetable—a rarity in New York fine dining. You'll see it in dishes like the radish salad with rhubarb and poached green radishes, where the vegetable's sweetness and structure have been calibrated to perfection. There's poached halibut with mussels and smoked Yukon potato, where the smoke adds a necessary mineral quality to an otherwise delicate plate. A scallop marinated in sweet mirin and wrapped in savoy cabbage arrives with the gentleness of something precious. Roasted lamb saddle and tenderloin with lamb bacon shows a chef thinking about texture and salt across a single protein.
What strikes you at Oyatte isn't the technical proficiency—that's a given—but the clarity of purpose. Lee has said the food is "all about making people happy," and there's no irony in that statement. This isn't cooking designed to intimidate or impress. It's cooking built on the belief that pleasure and precision go hand in hand, that controlling your ingredients lets you control the emotional experience of eating. The mugwort ice cream with kiwi jerky is a perfect example: an unexpected flavor combination, yes, but one that feels inevitable once you taste it.
After five years of development across multiple locations, Oyatte feels both inevitable and urgent. Lee has something to say, and he's saying it clearly. In a city drowning in new restaurants, this one matters.