"Getting to Ki feels like an escape room challenge—you’ll walk through three doors, including one labeled “Employees Only.” But once seated at this stone-walled chef’s counter inside Bar Sawa, you’re in for an intimate, high-energy dinner, with cooks shuffling to and fro to a turned-up playlist of Flo Rida and Beyoncé. At $285 per person, the 12-course tasting menu is more laidback than the price suggests, even if the hypnotizing, genre-pushing Korean dishes make you perk up in your chair. The crudo-like take on mulhwe with shark fin flounder delivers a salty, acidic punch, but the best courses are more restrained, like crispy octopus with key lime, truffle-topped perilla noodles that arrive right as you crave carbs, and an otherworldly lettuce ice cream dabbed with caviar." - sylvio martins, brant cox, garrett snyder, cathy park