"Many restaurants incorrectly think that the best way to grab attention is through flashy ingredients like uni and caviar: Not so. Perhaps the most radical thing a hot new restaurant can do in the year 2024 is have a straightforward menu with a clear point of view. In the case of New York City’s Kisa, simplicity is its superpower. Here, David JoonWoo Yun and Steve JaeWoo Choi (two-thirds of the team behind the playful Noho restaurant C as in Charlie) along with Yong Min Kim intend to evoke the taxi driver restaurants of Korea, where affordability and speed are top priorities. And yet, while it’s possible to finish a meal in under an hour in the homey dining room on a Lower East Side corner, diners won’t feel part of any traffic rush as they dig into some of Manhattan’s most stellar Korean food outside of K-Town. Part of the efficiency is that there is only one menu choice to make: What protein do you want? The rest is a predetermined selection of banchan (refills welcome) like crispy jeon or shrimp cured in soy sauce, a mix of staples, and some lesser-seen Korean sides that rotate seasonally. A full and gloriously abundant meal runs $32 — a price once unnoteworthy, but these days worth celebrating. This is not a restaurant for the picky, but rather for those who have a healthy appreciation for the tyranny of choice. Finish the meal with a complimentary coffee, hot chocolate, or black bean latte from the machine on the way out, a small souvenir to celebrate money well spent. — Emma Orlow, Eater NY reporter" - Eater Staff
