Most tasting menus remove your agency on purpose. You sit, plates arrive in a decided order, and the only decision left is whether to take the wine pairing. Atoboy, at 43 East 28th Street in NoMad, does something different with the same format: it charges a fixed price and then asks each person at the table to choose three dishes from the menu, which come out to be shared. It is a prix fixe you assemble yourself, and it changes what the meal feels like.
Kitchens with a last-reservation cutoff stop taking bookings well before they stop serving, and the gap catches people out constantly. Ask Karpo what the actual booking deadline is at the rooms near you tonight, and which ones still have a table at the hour you want.
Banchan, scaled up into a restaurant
The structure comes directly from the idea the restaurant was built on. Banchan are the small side dishes that arrive with every Korean meal — a spread of things, shared, eaten alongside each other rather than in sequence. Atoboy took that logic and made it the whole format rather than the accompaniment, which is why the table ends up covered in small dishes rather than working through courses.
The name carries the same idea. It comes from the ancient Korean word 'ato', meaning gift. The restaurant opened in July 2016 under husband-and-wife team Junghyun and Ellia Park, and its influence on how Korean food is presented in New York restaurants since then is hard to overstate.
Gratuity included, which changes the number
The prix fixe has been priced around $75 with gratuity included. That second clause is the one worth reading twice. A $75 menu with gratuity on top is, in practice, a $95 menu once you have tipped at a New York rate — and that is before tax and before anything to drink. A menu that has already absorbed service is genuinely cheaper than a nominally similar one that has not.
When you are comparing options in this price band, this is the single most common way the comparison goes wrong. Always run the final number. Prices at any restaurant move over time, so confirm the current figure when you book, but the structural point — service in rather than out — is the thing that makes this a strong value proposition rather than merely a fair one.
The last-reservation rule, which catches people
Service runs 5pm to 10:30pm Sunday through Thursday, with the last reservation at 9pm, and 5pm to 11:30pm Friday and Saturday with the last reservation at 10pm. The gap between the closing time and the last booking is ninety minutes on both, and it is there because a full prix fixe takes that long to serve properly.
People routinely misread this. Seeing a 10:30pm close and trying to book at 9:45 on a Wednesday does not work, and neither does turning up at ten hoping to be squeezed in. If you want a late dinner, the Friday and Saturday 10pm cutoff is the latest this room goes, and it is worth building the evening around rather than against.
How to choose three dishes well
The choose-your-own structure has a failure mode: a table of four people who each independently pick the thing that sounds best and end up with twelve dishes that are all in the same register. The whole point of the format is that everything is shared, so the choosing needs to be coordinated rather than individual.
The practical approach is to divide the menu by type across the table before anyone commits — someone takes the raw and cold dishes, someone takes the vegetables, someone takes the braised and grilled things, someone takes the rice or noodle dish. You end up with a spread that works as a meal rather than a set of parallel favourites. It takes two minutes and it is the difference between a good dinner and an oddly repetitive one.
One more thing the format quietly does: it removes the usual awkwardness about ordering unfamiliar things. In a conventional restaurant, choosing the dish nobody recognises is a small risk you take alone, and most people default to the safe option. When everything is shared and everyone has picked three, the unfamiliar dish is one ninth of the table rather than your entire dinner — which is exactly the condition under which people actually try things. It is a small design decision with a large effect on what gets eaten.
Where it sits
East 28th between Park and Madison puts you in NoMad, at the edge of what is sometimes called Rose Hill, and it is a genuinely convenient corner of Manhattan to meet in. The 6 stops at 28th Street essentially outside, the R and W are a block west, and Penn Station and Grand Central are both short rides for anyone arriving from out of the city.
It is also a neighbourhood with an unusual density of good, small, expensive-feeling restaurants at reasonable prices, which means a backup is close by if you have failed to book. That is more than can be said for most of the destinations people travel to for a tasting menu.
Practical notes
Atoboy, 43 East 28th Street, New York, NY 10016, in NoMad. Open 5pm-10:30pm Sunday to Thursday with the last reservation at 9pm, and 5pm-11:30pm Friday and Saturday with the last reservation at 10pm. Korean prix fixe in which each guest chooses three dishes to be shared family-style; priced around $75 with gratuity included — confirm the current price when booking. Opened July 2016 by Junghyun and Ellia Park, taking its name from the Korean word 'ato', meaning gift. Reservations recommended well ahead; contact info@atoboynyc.com. Nearest subway is 28th Street on the 6, or 28th Street on the R and W. Coordinate your three choices across the table rather than individually.
Please drink responsibly. Must be of legal drinking age.
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Ask Karpo first
Prix fixe formats vary far more than the price suggests — fixed courses, choose-your-own, gratuity in or out. Ask Karpo how the menu at the room you are considering actually works, what the real all-in cost is, and what the nearest comparable option is if it is booked.
