Kono
Yakitori restaurant · Chinatown
46 Bowery, New York, NY 10013
Highlights
Yakitori omakase showcasing the whole chicken over binchotan charcoal.
Yakitori omakase showcasing the whole chicken over binchotan charcoal.
"If you’re looking for a dark, small, date-y spot for the evening, we have an idea—so long as your date likes chicken. The Chinatown yakitori restaurant that specializes in, yes, America’s favorite bird, is doing a $250 menu at the chef’s counter that includes a welcome drink, caviar, and wagyu. Bring someone you want to welcome 2025 with, and watch Chef Kono grill some chicken liver over an open flame as the clock strikes midnight." - willa moore
"Kono is a sleek, serious yakitori restaurant with a crown-to-tail approach to serving chicken. Once the skewers start rolling in this omakase meal, you’ll get everything from heart and liver to inner thigh and chicken oyster, each with a distinct flavor. A resin model of their chochin skewer—a dainty stack of fallopian tube, liver, and an unfertilized egg—will appear mid-meal with several other interesting add-ons. Order at least a few. Almost everything in the space is black (even the toilet paper), keeping the spotlight squarely on the golden chicken skewers." - bryan kim, neha talreja, hannah albertine, molly fitzpatrick, sonal shah
"Kono, a 14-seat restaurant with a kappo-style yakitori omakase, is coming soon to Chinatown. It will have a semi-private dining area as well as a counter where the chef will prepare the chicken for you. If you’ve sat at the “select counter” at Yakitori Torishin–where chef Kono previously worked–you can expect a similarly luxurious experience with seasonal vegetables and special cuts of meat." - neha talreja
"Similar to Torien, your only option here is a $175 omakase that has 13 courses and is served at a 14-seat counter. Around halfway through your meal, the server will present you with a jewel-box offering of add-ons that include things like rooster crown and the rarely-seen Chochin skewer. We get why the latter is the chef’s favorite item. It combines fallopian tube with chicken liver that adds a bit of acid to cut the richness of an unlaid egg grilled in its membrane." - team infatuation
"Thought you knew all there was to know about chicken anatomy? Think again. Kono's $175 omakase includes everything from hearts to oysters to chochin: a stack of liver, fallopian tube, and unlaid egg. Be wary about the add-ons as some are pricey, and not super worth it. But simply being in the all-black room, watching licks of red flame sputtering up from white-hot binchotan whenever a piece of chicken fat drips onto it, makes Kono an extremely cool place for a night out. A meal here really is the embodiment of “dinner and a show." - will hartman, neha talreja, bryan kim, willa moore
