On a warm summer night in Manhattan, a crowd of young people gathered outside Atoboy, the award-winning restaurant from Michelin-starred chef Junghyun Park (JP) and Ellia Jeongeun Park. At 6 p.m., the doors opened. Instead of the usual table arrangement, two long tables stretched down the center of the intimate space. Some people knew each other, but most began introducing themselves to their neighbors, each exchange punctuated with the same question: “Which restaurant do you work at?”
All the guests that night were line cooks at some of the city’s top restaurants. The dinner marked the latest edition of S.Pellegrino Presents On The Line, a fine dining event created specifically for line cooks. The series began in 2021, when chef JP and Ellia Park set out to unite cooks from across New York, spark conversations around industry challenges, and offer access to the kinds of meals they prepare nightly. They partnered with S.Pellegrino to sponsor the dinners, the first two of which were hosted at Atoboy. Since then, the event has been presented at Crown Shy, BOKA in Chicago, L’Abeille, and most recently, Paya in Miami. The series returned to Atoboy for its eleventh edition on July 21, 2025.
Once everyone was seated, Champagne was poured, and chef JP and Ellia Park welcomed the room. Chef In Woo Ko, now head chef at Atoboy, shared, “This event is such a meaningful event for me personally, because four years ago, I was one of the line cooks who attended the On The Line dinner here.” He then introduced the evening’s menu, which included several dishes served for the first time as part of the restaurant’s new summer offerings.
I sat across from Isaak Maertens, who is actually on the line at the garde manger station at Atoboy. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, he started at Atoboy three months ago, after a stint at an omakase restaurant. Seated nearby were cooks from Eleven Madison Park, Union Square Café, and Maison Passarelle.
