One of Durham’s top chefs is set to unveil a new downtown restaurant
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- M Hansik will open June 24 as Michael Lee’s newest downtown Durham restaurant.
- The restaurant will serve small shared plates and larger Korean dishes for dinner.
- M Hansik will operate Wednesday through Sunday at 501 Washington St. in Durham.
The food at M Hansik in Durham is often wheeled through the dining room on carts. This is probably for convenience, but it also achieves an element of performance, catching the eye-levels of sitting diners with pedestals of fried chicken, sizzling ribbons of pork belly and long platters of charred lasagna.
M Hansik opens June 24 as the newest restaurant in the Michael Lee empire. The star chef of M Sushi, M Tempura and M Kokko built M Hansik as a traditional Korean restaurant, taking over the former Plum space near Durham’s Geer Street district.
Lee said M Hansik is his group’s first “reputable, full-blown Korean restaurant,” with a menu of traditional Korean techniques and flavors with modern interpretations.
“The menu will change all the time, but this is our interpretation of a traditional Korean restaurant,” Lee said in a phone interview. “But with our own twist.”
The former Plum dining room has been updated with dark woods and rich jade banquettes.
M Hansik menu
On the menu, M Hansik is built like a Korean tapas restaurant, with servers recommending two or three shared plates per person.
Small plates include steamed kimchi dumplings, crispy fried chicken wings with a gochujang dipping sauce, a tender hamachi crudo and a Korean blood sausage. At a media preview last week, a two-sheet lasagna was popular in the dining room, where curled waves of baked pasta sheets were stuffed with black bean sauce, minced pork and a béchamel sauce.
Larger dishes include grilled beef short ribs and spicy pork belly, a traditional kimchi soup, bibimbap beef tartare and a Korean paella.
On the drinks side, M Hansik partnered with Durham’s Fullsteam Brewing for a house rice lager, made with kolsch yeast. Other drinks include draft beer and wine and a seasonal cocktail list, featuring a Sungold Fizz, a gin drink made with lemon and sungold tomatoes.
M restaurants
M Hansik is Lee’s seventh Triangle restaurant, an empire that began with the acclaimed M Sushi and grew to the ramen and noodle shop M Kokko, the fry bar M Tempura, M Izakaya and M Pocha.
M Hansik is located at 501 Washington St. in Durham and will be open for dinner Wednesday through Sunday.
