Bori Korean Kitchen & Bar Has Been Waiting for You to Notice
Chef James Park's restaurant on the second floor above Jolly Pumpkin is four months old and worth your attention
The stairs up from the Jolly Pumpkin ground floor take about eight steps. By the time you reach the landing you're in a different restaurant — a genuinely different place: fifteen tables, lower light.
I came here for a friend's birthday. Bori Korean Kitchen & Bar opened November 13, 2025, and a lot of people still haven't made it up yet.
Chef James Park opened Bori in partnership with Mission Restaurant Group's Jon Carlson. Park's background is specific to this place in ways that matter: born in South Korea, in the United States for roughly seven years, culinary degree from Grand Rapids Community College, and time in both Jolly Pumpkin and Miss Kim's kitchens before this. He knew the building. He knew what was missing from it.
The name Bori is the Korean word for barley: a staple grain, a humble crop. Park describes the restaurant as "a love letter to Korea, to Ann Arbor, and to the feeling of home." That's not copy. The menu reads that way too.
What to Order
The japchae ($18) is where to start. Glass noodles with marinated steak and vegetables, chewy and savory, the protein absorbed into the noodles rather than stacked on top. Japchae at Bori arrives cooked the way it should be, which is not as common as you'd expect. Park points first-timers toward it. It's the right call.
Dakgangjeong ($17) is crispy glazed chicken in three versions: plain, soy garlic, and spicy. Order the soy garlic and the spicy side by side. Soy garlic registers in layers rather than arriving all at once. The spicy version builds gradually without tipping into punishment. These are genuinely different from each other, which makes the choice worth making.
Dolsot bibimbap ($21) arrives in the stone pot that names it, the rice crisping against the heated sides while the vegetables stay fresh on top. The contrast between the browned bottom layer and the raw-edged greens above it is the point — don't mix everything immediately. Let the bowl do its work.
GungJung Tteokbokki ($20) is the royal court version of the rice cake dish, less aggressively spiced than street versions and more nuanced at the edges. The rice cakes themselves are soft and chewy, different in texture from almost everything else on the table.
Kimbap ($11) and Korean pizzas fill out the shareable end. The pizzas work because the toppings (marinated beef, pork belly, kimchi) belong together regardless of what they're served on. The kimbap is a good order if you're splitting between two people who haven't eaten in a while.
The Korean chicken sando is worth knowing about before you order it. Crispy chicken, Korean spice, turmeric aioli, shoestring fries — and if you've had Jolly Pumpkin's chicken sandwich downstairs, you'll recognize the bones. The spice profile is genuinely different, and it's a good sandwich. Just don't come expecting it to be entirely its own thing. It's dressed up from the kitchen below.
Close with the gaeseong juak: traditional Korean donuts, fried and honey-glazed. They're not architectural. They're just good.
The Bar
Soju, makgeolli, and seju anchor the Korean drinks program alongside craft cocktails, beer, and wine. The cocktails are built around Korean spirits as a base, not a garnish — the difference shows up in the glass. If you order a soju cocktail expecting a shooter dressed up, you'll get something more considered than that.
General Manager Chyna Blu runs the floor and knows what's on the menu. If you don't know where to start on the drinks side, ask.
The Noraebang
There is a soundproof karaoke room at the back. The setup is noraebang: private-room format, not bar karaoke. That distinction changes what it is and how it gets used. Approximately eight people, mirrors and colored lights, $40 per hour by reservation.
Noraebang is a Korean social institution, the standard way to close an evening in Seoul. Placing one in downtown Ann Arbor changes what kind of evening is actually possible here. Dinner stops being the main event and becomes the first act.
On Fridays and Saturdays, the kitchen runs until 11 p.m. and the bar stays open until 1 a.m. The noraebang can be reserved separately from dinner, which means you can skip the meal and come just for the room, or let one extend into the other.
Once spring arrives, there is also a shared upper-level deck with Jolly Pumpkin below.
The Honest Assessment
The line between Bori and Jolly Pumpkin isn't always clean. Some dishes are fully Bori's own: the japchae, the dakgangjeong, the bibimbap. Others carry Jolly Pumpkin kitchen DNA in ways that show up in the plate. That's how shared kitchens work, and it's worth knowing before you sit down with expectations calibrated by the Concentrate writeup rather than the menu.
The distinctly Korean dishes are the reason to go. They're good, and a few of them are genuinely interesting in a city that keeps adding Korean options to its dining scene. Ann Arbor now has Miss Kim on West Washington, Little Kim two blocks away, Hola Seoul in Kerrytown, and Bori occupying the second floor of an institution on Main Street. That's not a trend that started recently. It's been building for years, and Bori is the most recent proof that it's landed in the mainstream.
The noraebang doesn't need a caveat. It's the right kind of addition to a downtown dining block that mostly closes by 10.
Worth going. Go for the dishes that are Bori's own.
Bori Korean Kitchen & Bar 311 S. Main St., Floor 2 | Ann Arbor (734) 590-7100 | borikoreankitchen.com
Hours: Sun–Thu 4–10 p.m. · Fri–Sat 4 p.m.–1 a.m. (kitchen closes 11 p.m.) Reservations via OpenTable. Noraebang by separate reservation.