Koreatown restaurant and lounge Intercrew is set to reopen on September 18 with an all-new menu after pausing operations in early August. The restaurant first opened for dinner and drinks in the historic Morgan Adams building in July 2021, before expanding with a coffee window off Catalina Street, and lunch hours in January 2024. When Intercrew reopens, it’ll return its focus to evening offerings and serve a new California-inspired menu from chef Johnny Tran.

The reinvention of Intercrew was on owner Daniel Park’s mind long before the restaurant temporarily closed its doors on September 1, 2024. Since it originally opened, Park and his other business partners felt a disconnect between their vision for the restaurant and how it actually operated. “When we launched, although we thought the food was excellent, we felt like it never really captured our identity,” Park says. With a change in the management team, he saw an opportunity to reshape Intercrew into something that hewed closer to his original dreams of a bustling supper club and bar.

Park’s vision for Intercrew transcends it being just a restaurant. He wants the space to become a cultural hub for the neighborhood, and represent the evolution of Koreatown from his childhood memories into what it is today. His vision is reflected through changes like expanding the main level stage to accommodate live bands and inviting local artists to play weekly. “I really want it to be something familiar but unique to this town,” Park says. “I don’t think there’s a venue in K-Town that is like this, where we have sit-down, coursed meals, but also the ability to just take in culture.” He hopes that when people come in from the neighborhood, they’ll feel like Intercrew is their home as much as he feels like it’s his.

Tran, who worked as a sous chef at Otium before joining Intercrew in 2021, took the temporary closure as an opportunity to reinvigorate the menu using his penchant for California cooking. With a background in French culinary approaches that taught him the importance of seasonality, Tran will rely heavily on farmers market produce and goods from local fishermen to inform the menu. Intercrew’s new menu swaps dishes like braised pork belly and hwe dup bap (raw fish over rice) for hamachi crudo and grilled whole shrimp. Starters include focaccia with creme fraiche, heirloom tomate aguachile, and scallops on the half shell; larger-format mains consist of crab fat caramel fried chicken, lobster risotto, and a duck breast with a black pepper demi-glace. In addition to sourcing ingredients from local markets, Tran will also grow his own produce on a rooftop garden.

Tran sees his time at Intercrew in sharp contrast to the brigade-style kitchens he worked in for years; he hopes that he’s able to foster a healthier workplace for his team than the “aggressive” environments he has experienced in the past. “It’s a nice breath of fresh air, to be honest,” Tran says. “It’s fun here, the fact that I’m able to incorporate more of my culture and the partners’ culture into my cuisine makes it exciting and new for me.”

When Intercrew reopens, it’ll hold hours from dinner to late night, Wednesday through Saturday; lunch hours will not return immediately. “I think trying to extend it to daytime was one of the things that was stretching us then in terms of our identity,” Park says. “I think maybe we got to the point we were trying to cater to everything. We had to scale back and be like, ‘Well, what exactly are we trying to do here?’” As for the coffee window, it’ll remain closed for the time being, but Park hopes to find a way to reintegrate it into the business. “My favorite thing about [the window] is that it just opens on to Catalina, and I feel like that physically connects us to just our neighborhood a little bit better,” he adds.

Headed into the reopening, Park and Tran are just excited to see the version of Intercrew they’ve always dreamed of come to life, and finally feel like they have the team to make it happen. “I have a lot of confidence in the synergy of this group to be able to take this to new heights that we might have not gone to in the past,” Park says.

Intercrew is set to reopen for dinner on September 18, 2024. Reservations are available via OpenTable.