Spring 2nd Branch opens in Marietta’s Church Street development

Spring 2nd Branch, a casual Korean restaurant from the team behind Spring, has opened in the Marietta Square Church Street development.

Chef Brian So, chef Kyung Kim and sommelier Daniel Crawford have been working on the restaurant at 113 Church St. for almost two years. So and Crawford also own Spring in Marietta Square, which won a Michelin star last year but is currently closed for renovations until 2026.

In the meantime, fans can look to Spring 2nd Branch for their fix of So and Kim’s cooking.

The menu is much larger than Spring’s tightly curated New American offerings. So said it’s been a new challenge to execute such a large menu within Spring 2nd Branch’s small space.

The restaurant’s interior comes out to a little less than 1,700 square feet, and a climate-controlled patio adds another 1,000 square feet of seating, So said. There are about 88 seats in total.

Korean restaurant Spring 2nd Branch's dining room is dimly lit with neon signs and TVs playing Korean music videos. (Courtesy of Peter Ho)

So and Kim developed the menu with the goal of paying homage “to what I call the first generation Korean-American restaurant that I used to go to back in the early ‘90s, late ‘80s when I was a little kid,” he said.

Those first generation restaurants were open in a time when there weren’t as many Korean restaurants in metro Atlanta, so the ones that did exist had to “do it all” by creating broad menus with “homey dishes,” So said.

“That’s the kind of Korean restaurant that I love and also have just such deep respect for,” he said. “I mean, they hustled and they grinded. These are the type of restaurants that sent my generation to college and really paved the way for my generation to be able to do something like this for, more or less, essentially for fun rather than for survival.”

The menu is separated into appetizers; meat and seafood; bibimbap; cold and hot noodles; steamed eggs; soups; silken tofu stew; hot pot and snack food. Expect dishes like bulgogi, bossam (boiled pork belly served with cabbage, radish kimchi stuffing and fresh oysters), yukhoe bibim naengmyeon (cold buckwheat noodles in a spicy, fermented chili sauce), soondae guk (Korean blood sausage soup) and yangnyeom chicken wings.

Soondae guk, a Korean blood sausage soup, is on the menu at Spring 2nd Branch. (Courtesy of Peter Ho)

The beverage menu includes several offerings from Doraville distillery Minhwa Spirits. Diners will find two domestic makgeolli, a Korean rice wine, including a draft makgeolli from Minhwa, and a premium makgeolli from Brooklyn brand Hanna Makgeolli. Either variety would pair well with any dish on the menu, So said.

There are also three beers available, good for spicy foods, So said, as well as soju from Minhwa Spirits; three wines curated by Crawford; and Crown Royal whiskey and Ki One, South Korea’s first craft single malt whiskey. So said he found Crown Royal being served in Korean restaurants he visited around the country and was inspired to include the Canadian whiskey, too.

The space is arranged with the kitchen in the front of the building and the dining area in the back. When designing the restaurant, So said they wanted it to feel “like an escape from Marietta Square.”

Chef Brian So's Korean restaurant Spring 2nd Branch has opened on Church Street in Marietta. (Courtesy of Peter Ho)

They added a walkway at the front with a mural created by So’s cousin along with a print of a painting from his late uncle, who was an artist — it depicts a Korean warship, one of So’s favorite paintings. Also in the walkway is an area modeled after a market, essentially the restaurant’s functional dry storage, with Korean ingredients and beers on display.

“To me it’s reminiscent of walking through an aisle of H-Mart,” he said.