Koi - NYC

This past week, I went to a business lunch at Koi, by Bryant Park in midtown. Koi is a branch of a sushi restaurant that started in Los Angeles. I have been to both of these restaurants before and I definitely think the Los Angeles restaurant is better. Maybe it's because NYC has so many high-end sushi restaurants or maybe it's the location in the middle of all the midtown office buildings, but Koi definitely seems like an overlooked restaurant. However, I still like this restaurant because it has a large variety of sushi rolls - including those crazy rolls with baked seafood and crazy combinations, that you really only see in California (in particular, I'm thinking of Tomodachi by the UCLA campus in Westwood...soooo good, and the rolls are gigantic). So anyway, I'm glad there is a place where we can find these types of rolls in NYC - even though they are crazily overpriced.

One of the best things at Koi is their Crispy Rice with spicy tuna. Spicy tuna is just one of my favorite foods ever (I sometimes make spicy tuna at home and just eat an entire bowl of spicy tuna in one sitting!) - and this is definitely something unique that you will not find at other sushi restaurants. I love the crisp I get when I bite into this - I love different textures in food, and you definitely get that here.

Although, like I said, it is kind of crazy expensive - $16 for these 4 pieces you see!

One of the other dishes I love at Koi is their Creamy Rock Shrimp Tempura ($18). I really like the coating on the shrimp tempura at Koi - it has a little heat to it - and I love piling the shrimp onto a piece of the endive and eating it together that way. I think this is much better than the rock shrimp tempura at Morimoto in NY.

We also had the dragon roll which was reallyy good as well - although I don't know if I would say any sushi roll is worth a $22 price tag? I would recommend Koi as a good place to go to for just a light bite and drinks - but the appetizer portions are still about $15-20 so ... it just depends on your budget! If it's a nice day out, I would really just recommend buying food somewhere and eating it in Bryant Park - one of my favorite parks in the city!

Another thing I should note is that Koi is extremely noisy. I thought maybe it was just noisy at night when I was here for dinner the first time, but I don't understand why it was so noisy during a weekday lunch in the middle of all the midtown office buildings? And I wasn't even sitting in the main dining area, but rather at the sushi bar!

If I ever go to Koi again, it would just be to get the crispy rice with spicy tuna and to try the Chef Sampler Plate for dessert - it was $44. I was very intrigued by this on the dessert menu just because I have never seen a $44 dessert before. On their website, it says it "includes all desserts," but ... who orders that?