Inside The Hyun, The First Butcher Shop in the Nation to Process and Sell Wagyu

At first glance, The Hyun doesn’t appear like a regular butcher shop. Perhaps more like a fine jewelry shop or designer handbag retail store. But these sleek interiors, organized with glass cases and brushed metals, show off something far more delicious — premium Japanese wagyu beef. 

The Hyun, the first butcher shop in the nation to sell wagyu, is a retail project by chef Jae Kim, owner of the nearby Korean barbecue restaurant HYUN in Manhattan’s Koreatown. Just below the beef atelier is a 2,000-square-foot butchering basement, home to an in-house operation that offers premium cuts for retail, wholesale, and e-commerce for those who want to order from a distance. (While many other shops around the nation sell wagyu, The Hyun says it’s the first spot to butcher it in-house.)

“The idea for a butcher shop stems from a blend of cultural tradition and personal passion,” Kim, who is also the shop’s head butcher, says. “As I honed my skills in butchery, I began to see it as an art form, striving to respect the natural qualities of the cattle while discovering new cuts. My goal was to introduce this meticulous and artistic approach to butchery in the United States, creating a space that feels like a museum, where each cut tells its own story.” 

At The Hyun, Kim wants to lure customers typically skeptical of butcher shops, which, well, tends to remind humans that we are very much eating animals. To ease the experience, Kim has added all those high-end decor touches to better showoff the more than 50 cuts of beef available for purchase, including filet mignon, chateaubriand, chuck flap tail, culotte head, sirloin butt, short rib, brisket, shank, and offal. Cuts are selected with the help of a specialist and packaged in a wooden box. If the customer buys a box of three or six cuts, they are wrapped in Bojagi, a colorful silk fabric Korean gift wrap, then adorned with tassels. It’s a far cry from plain old butcher paper. The meats are then sealed in the shop’s proprietary vacuum system, which keeps the product fresh for up to three weeks. Step-by-step guides are also available to help shoppers prepare their premium products at home. 

Of course, this delicate packaging is just the final step of an arduous process, which starts with shipping in boneless wagyu cattle from various prefectures throughout Japan. With surgical precision and specialized knives, Japanese butchers debone the cattle, separating the flesh into a whole boneless beef, which is then frozen and flown to the U.S., where it is quarantined by customs. The meat arrives at The Hyun’s underground butchering facility in about a week. The process is tedious and expensive, which is why Kim suspects he’s the first to open a premium butcher shop dedicated to wagyu. 

The Hyun is located at 253 Third Avenue in New York. Products are available for delivery in NYC via Mercato, Uber Eats, and Instacart. The Hyun will also soon ship nationwide via thehyun.com.