Restaurant Ki

Los Angeles’s 2025 Eater Award Winners | Eater LA

"A contemporary Korean tasting counter tucked in the Kaneyoshi-plex beneath a Little Tokyo office building, this intimate, three-cook setup channels Ki Kim’s upbringing in Colorado and South Korea and his fine-dining experiences into a Korean kaiseki-like procession of more than a dozen courses. Between pours of bubbly or sake to a laid-back hip-hop soundtrack, thrilling bites arrive — kimchi-seasoned cod milt piped like frosting over crisp cylinders of dried Korean seaweed; grilled lobster slices swimming in doenjang butter and dusted with raspberry powder; a summer crown of ripe tomato around a green quenelle of perilla sorbet; and, in fall, fragrant songyi mushrooms tinting a Dungeness crab noodle soup. Korean flavors hum as an undercurrent while the dishes harmonize, and the room — lit like an Arts District photo studio — embodies Kim’s framework: sustainable for the team, expressive and personal, aspirational but not shouty, a nightly telling of his story for those lucky enough to sit at the stone counter." - Rebecca Roland