Kochi

Kochi opened in late 2019 at 652 Tenth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen as chef Sungchul Shim’s first solo restaurant. Kochi means skewer in Korean. Shim, raised in Jeollanam-do, cooked through Le Bernardin, Per Se, Morimoto, and Neta before building a tasting menu that uses skewer forms and Korean flavors with fine-dining technique. The house frames an eight-course progression as an homage to Korean royal cuisine inspired by street food, with seasonal ingredients and an open kitchen. Michelin awards one star. Dinner runs nightly; reservations sit on OpenTable for the chef’s counter, dining room, and outdoor seats.

Recent coverage puts the tasting around $145 per person before drinks, with optional supplements such as abalone, caviar, uni, or wagyu that can raise the check quickly, and beverage pairings published around $110; check live prices before you book. Courses that keep coming up include raw hwe preparations, skewered seafood or octopus, duck, and a tuna bibimbap finish. The kitchen’s dietary rules are strict on vegan, celiac, and many allergy paths, so write ahead. Shim later opened Mari nearby for street-food-inspired Korean hand rolls; that room is a separate page. Among New York’s Korean stars, Kochi is the Hell’s Kitchen skewer tasting: shorter and more playful than Atomix or Jungsik, more composed than a Koreatown barbecue walk-in.

Diners treat Kochi as a polished but approachable Hell’s Kitchen tasting: jewel-like bites, skewer courses you eat with your hands, and an open kitchen that keeps the room lively. Theater-district proximity shows up in booking talk, though regulars say it is not a rushed pre-show sprint. People who like it praise the bibimbap course, the pacing of eight courses, and pairings that mix wine with Korean drinks.

The same reviews warn about supplements that inflate the bill, tight seating, and dietary policies that turn many requests away. A minority want more length or luxury cues once they have paid tasting-menu money. Come when you want reserved Korean skewer tasting near Tenth Avenue, not Flatiron steakhouse grilling or a longer white-tablecloth or counter tasting at Jungsik or Atomix.