Korean Fine Dining in Little Tokyo at Restaurant Ki

Restaurant Ki is the Los Angeles fine dining room to book if you want modern Korean cooking at a chef's counter. It holds ten seats in a basement complex in Little Tokyo, shares the building with Sushi Kaneyoshi and Bar Sawa, and serves one tasting menu a night, starting at 6:30 pm. Chef Ki Kim opened it in January 2025, won a Michelin star and the guide's Young Chef Award within the same year, and kept the star in the 2026 California selection.

Kim was born in South Korea and raised in Colorado, and he trained in three of the most decorated Korean kitchens in America: Atomix and Jungsik in New York, and Benu in San Francisco. In late 2021 he opened Kinn, a small tasting-menu restaurant in Koreatown that critics admired. It closed at the end of 2023, with Kim citing uneven business and burnout.

He spent most of the next year cooking for Jordan Kahn at Vespertine and Meteora, then partnered with Yoshiyuki Inoue, the chef-owner of Sushi Kaneyoshi, who offered him a finished counter beside his own sushi bar. Restaurant Ki opened there a week after the January 2025 wildfires began. Time Out's critic, who had found Kinn's portions too small, gave the new restaurant five stars in August 2025 and called it the city's next great tasting menu.

The same review set Ki beside Baroo, the other modern Korean tasting menu in the city. Baroo's chef draws on Korean Buddhist temple cooking and traditional fermentation, and the meal there feels rustic and grounded. Ki sits firmly in the global world of fine dining, closer in spirit to Atomix in New York, with tweezers, a brigade and plates that change with the farmers' market. If you have eaten at one, the other makes a useful comparison.

Ki serves more than a dozen courses, most of them built on seafood, using French technique on Korean flavors and produce from Southern California farmers' markets. The restaurant's own signatures are shirako gimbap with black truffle and kimchi rice, and a grilled lettuce ice cream with caviar and cheongju crème, a cream made with Korean rice wine.

Other dishes Time Out described in 2025 show the range. Lobster tail is grilled over binchotan charcoal, dusted with dried raspberry and served with doenjang, morels and a strand of fermented ramp. Octopus from Kinn returns as a two-bite course with an aioli made from the octopus head. Perilla leaf sorbet sits with salmon roe and smoked tomato, and caviar crowns purple potato purée with spearhead squid hidden underneath.

A noodle course uses seafood noodles from the Southern California chef who invented the ramen burger, topped on one visit with Dungeness crab, freshwater eel and minced myoga. Before dessert comes a mushroom-shaped ice cream sandwich, and on Time Out's second visit the meal ended with omija tea granita, finger lime, cranberry jelly and a strawberry lemonade foam. The menu moves with the seasons, so expect some of these to have changed.

The beverage pairing costs $190 per person, according to the restaurant's beverage menu, and it moves through Champagne, Muscadet, sake, Chablis Grand Cru, Loire Cabernet Franc and Napa Cabernet, with a basil eau de vie and a roasted rice and dandelion drink along the way. Non-drinkers get house non-alcoholic cocktails; Time Out's critic liked a clarified rhubarb juice with thyme and an omija tea aged in a whiskey barrel.

Tea is a lighter way through the meal: Kyoto sencha, Kyoto hojicha and burdock root are $8 each. The bottle list leans hard on Burgundy and grower Champagne, and it climbs well into four figures. A half bottle of Dhondt blanc de blancs at $80 is the gentlest way in.

Dinner runs Wednesday through Sunday, from 6:30 pm to 9 pm, as a single seating, so everyone at the counter starts together. Reservations go through SevenRooms, where the same booking page also covers Sushi Kaneyoshi, Bar Sawa and Maison Kanatha. With only ten seats a night, weekend dates go first; a Wednesday or Thursday is the realistic target.

Arrive a few minutes before 6:30 pm. Because the courses are served to the whole counter at once, a late guest misses the opening plates rather than holding up the room. For dietary questions or larger groups, email info@restaurantki.com or call (213) 786-3154 before you book, not on the night.

The room is a minimalist marble counter facing the kitchen, and service is quiet and formal in the same style as its neighbors. Part of the evening is talking with Kim and his cooks as they plate, so solo diners are well looked after here.

Little Tokyo is one of the oldest Japanese American neighborhoods in the country, and it rewards an hour on foot before dinner. Start at Japanese Village Plaza, the pedestrian lane of shops and snack counters with its fire-lookout tower at the First Street entrance, then walk to the Japanese American National Museum and the Go For Broke Monument, which honors Japanese American soldiers of World War II.

The museum's original home is the former Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple, and the low brick buildings along First Street make up the Little Tokyo Historic District. After dinner, Bar Sawa in the same complex serves an omakase of cocktails, and Sushi Kaneyoshi's counter is next door if you're planning your next special occasion.

Address: Restaurant Ki, at 111 San Pedro St, Los Angeles, CA 90012, in a basement complex in Little Tokyo. Phone: (213) 786-3154. Email: info@restaurantki.com. Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 6:30 pm to 9 pm, one seating per night. Format: ten-seat counter, multi-course New Korean tasting menu. Recognition: one Michelin star; Michelin Young Chef Award 2025.

Booking: SevenRooms only, shared with Sushi Kaneyoshi, Bar Sawa and Maison Kanatha. Drinks: beverage pairing $190; teas $8; full wine list strong in Burgundy and Champagne. Sister venues: Sushi Kaneyoshi, Bar Sawa and Maison Kanatha, all within a short walk. Getting there: the Metro A and E lines stop at Little Tokyo/Arts District station, a few blocks east.