Musaek 6 E 32nd St, Lower Level, New York, NY 10016 Website
Located beneath the busy streets of Koreatown in Manhattan, Musaek is a seafood and cocktail bar built around a concept of clarity.
The venue draws inspiration from Korean coastal cuisine, pairing a seafood-driven menu with an ambitious clarified cocktail program. The name Musaek, meaning “colorless” in Korean, reflects this idea: drinks that appear visually transparent yet carry layers of flavor and technique.
Behind the bar, the design follows the same philosophy. The space centers around a large U-shaped counter that allows guests to experience the full process of service and preparation up close, creating an open and interactive bar environment within an otherwise dark, atmospheric setting.
For this project, Behind Bars delivered a full stainless steel bar system designed to support the venue’s operational rhythm while maintaining a clean visual presence within the space.
We wanted a bar that felt open and modern, where guests can sit right in front of the action and see everything happening. With the setup we have, bartenders can prepare drinks, keep everything at the right temperature, and stay connected with the guests at the same time. Once you get used to working in it, everything just flows.
The bar at Musaek was designed around a curved U-shaped layout, allowing multiple bartenders to work simultaneously while maintaining full visibility across the service area. Each station integrates refrigeration, garnish storage, batching space and glassware access directly within reach of the bartender. The layout reduces unnecessary movement behind the counter while keeping the focus on guest interaction across the bar.
At the center of Musaek’s beverage program is a fully clarified cocktail menu.
Clarification techniques such as agar clarification and milk washing are used extensively, producing drinks that appear completely transparent while carrying complex flavor profiles built from Korean ingredients and culinary influences.
Preparation for each cocktail batch can take hours, with ingredients ranging from Korean pear, barley tea and pandan to seaweed and citrus.
One of the venue’s signatures, the Mango & Nurungji, draws inspiration from scorched rice traditionally found at the bottom of Korean rice pots. The toasted rice flavor is infused into the spirit base and combined with mango syrup and citrus, creating a clarified cocktail that is both delicate and layered.
The result is a drink program that visually aligns with the concept of Musaek: clean, transparent, and quietly complex.
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