Junghyun “JP” Park is at the top of New York City’s new guard of fine dining as the owner and executive chef of Atoboy, Naro, Seoul Salon, and Atomix, the latter of which holds two Michelin stars and is currently ranked No. 12 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Camari Mick recently announced she would leave her role as executive pastry chef and partner at Raf’s, with plans to open a new concept, L’Atelier Ébène; she’d also previously served as executive pastry chef at the Michelin-starred the Musket Room and culinary consultant at Cafe Zaffri. Both have received major accolades, including Food & Wine’s Best New Chef as well as recognition from the James Beard Award Foundation, with Mick a semifinalist for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker and Atomix winning Outstanding Hospitality in 2025. Here, they discuss their experiences gaining recognition as chefs and the fun parts of building community.
Junghyun Park: So far, we’ve been growing every year; 2024 was a big hit. Rebounding from COVID, everyone was just so excited about going out and meeting people, having nice food and wine. They were splashing money. But 2025 is definitely challenging. This year, it’s tough. Compared with last year, the revenue is not growing.
Atoboy is turning nine years old, and Atomix is seven years old. But for some people, they’re not on their list yet — it’s, “Let’s go to this new place first, and then Atoboy maybe later.” In 2025, there’s so many new restaurants; keeping up is not easy. At the same time, this industry is always about the people. We always meet amazing people through the restaurant, not only chefs and diners but other restaurant owners.
Camari Mick: Yeah, I definitely love the diversity in dining within a hospitality group like yours: a little fine dining, casual, and then your big space like Naro, which is still approachable, because of the location and the price point, where you have lunch and dinner.
It’s [about] having multiple spaces where you can have outlets: I’m gonna do tweezer-y stuff over here, and then, over here, I could do a classic salad. For me, it allows me to be creative. I have multiple exercises where I think, This dish can work over here, but maybe we do a simpler version over there. You’re able to shorten that admin time of typing recipes because we’re using similar recipes throughout all our venues, but it’s really nice to see it come to fruition in different ways.
I’m curious what you think the differences are here in dining versus in Korea?
JP: The dining scene in South Korea is definitely growing. Now, people actually travel to Korea to have nice food. There are so many amazing restaurants happening. New York is very unique though, and it’s really hard to compare with other cities. People are always traveling from around the world to New York, so we have a real diversity of guests in our restaurants. Here, we can open for dinner at 5 p.m. and people are still coming in at 10.
CM: Do you have breakfast at any of your restaurants?
JP: No.
CM: Good. [Laughs] At Cafe Zaffri and Raf’s, we have breakfast, so we’re learning the trends of that a little bit more, like, obviously we’re gonna be busier on weekends. We find that people will spend a little bit more money during that later breakfast, because some people will get something savory and something sweet from the pastry case. A lot of people sit a lot longer for breakfast too.
Raf’s is a little bit smaller than Cafe Zaffri, which is connected to a hotel. Our check averages are definitely higher there, because people will have stuff sent to the room and it’s also a little bit pricier than what we do at Raf’s. At the Musket Room, where people sit for the tasting menu, we’re also doing a lot more community classes, like an oyster-shucking class, a wine-tasting class. It just depends on the neighborhood, but we have a lot of young professionals who don’t have kids, so they want to spend money on learning a new hobby.
JP: How are you reaching out?
CM: We have apartments above us so we’ll take their mail, not to trap them, but when they come to get it, to be like, “Oh, just so you know, we’re doing this.” We have a box outside of the Musket Room in which we’ll put the menu and a pamphlet. And then also our newsletters. Social media also helps with that.
JP: Building community is really important — people having loyalty to the restaurant, coming back again and again and not coming there as a guest, but more being part of the family.
CM: That’s how you build the repeat customers. I feel like there are often times when you see restaurants open not for the hospitable reason. You lose that genuine connection when you’re just trying to turn and burn and make money. That is definitely one thing I appreciate about fine dining: It’s more of the experience, and not necessarily always about eating.
That’s why I really appreciate Michelin experiences — though winning those awards can create a lot of anxiety. It’s like, okay, now how do we scale up? When it came to getting the star at the Musket Room, it was like, What happens now? I wish there was more support surrounding that and how to navigate those waters.
There’s a whole mysterious shroud surrounding Michelin still and it would be lovely to break that curtain and know exactly what they’re looking for beyond the standards. Because when you go to Europe, I feel like their Michelin standards are different from what’s happening here.
JP: Yeah. I think definitely Michelin, the James Beard Foundation Award, and World’s Best have helped us as a business, for sure, but there can be pressure. They create more responsibility to the young crew, to the cuisine that I’m presenting, the community. When I was young, I was focused on being a Michelin chef as an amazing achievement. After getting it, I’m thinking about what I can bring to this achievement.
We got two Michelin stars at Atomix, but people keep asking, “Do you want a third?” Chefs tell us, “You’re going to be the next three-star.” It can be stressful, but at the same time, I’m not living for that. I want to make really good restaurants that people enjoy. The awards might be helping to achieve that in a certain way, but I’m trying to be more focused about where I started and what the initial goal was.
But you mention a really good point, because when I got Food & Wine’s Best New Chef award [in 2019], they were trying to make some sort of mentorship program. You kind of feel like, What should I do? If media is reaching out, how do I answer? What should we do if we get a business proposal that we don’t know how to read? Maybe someone winning this award is having a meeting with a previous award winner to be like, “How is your life changing? What’s going to be next?”
CM: I got Best New Chef after you [in 2024] and they built out [the program] to be a few days where you got to talk to past winners and have that community where you feel part of something. Now I can reach out to certain people and have the opportunity to ask questions. Especially as a Black woman, I don’t know how much I should be charging for certain things, so it’s nice to be able to be like, “I saw that you did this. How much did you charge? What was that experience like?” Being able to advocate for myself is very important.
As chefs, we’re automatically mentors to anybody who is on our team. I’m pretty sure you have a waiting list of people wanting to work for you, but there are people reaching out to me for formal mentorship and I’ve never actually done that before. I’ve only mentored people who worked for me.
I definitely feel like I have to create a space. As a person of color, going into like, Le Bernardin and working there, you’re not really going to see anybody who looks like you. I’ve done it, I can tell you for sure. [Laughs] Keeping the door open for the generation behind us is very important. Having these conversations and being transparent is really important because it can get to that crab-in-the-barrel mentality and that’s a generational curse that we have to break.
JP: Sure, we’re not here alone. We’re growing as a team. I have a mentor I can talk with, and that’s important because working in the kitchen is hard. It’s about building a good team culture too. I cannot jump in on every single line; I need to build in a really good head chef and sous chef and team: They can bring our team culture into the next generation. That is not easy though.
CM: One...