Cote

Summary

Indoor dining finally opened again in NYC on September 30, 2020. There are those that feel it’s reckless in this COVID temperament, but we still decided to celebrate by booking an indoor reservation at Cote, a 1 Michelin Star Korean BBQ restaurant. Normally, this is difficult to get a reasonable time, so we were happy it was not too bad. Like all upscale restaurants, they take your temperature via the forehead, and each table is partitioned by a plastic partition. Aside from air conditioning, there’s no way for your aerosols to hit another table unless you tried to spit a few feet up. There’s more than enough space between booths, so it was very enjoyable.

There are basically 3 ways to order:

1. The Butcher’s Feast
2. The Steak Omakase (we ordered this)
3. A’la carte

The key differences between the first 2 are the Butcher’s Feast gives you less meat options but includes 2 stews (kimchi and dwen-jang) with rice. They usually recommend ordering additional sides with this. The Steak Omakase gives you way more meat options but does NOT include the 2 stews, and they do not recomment ordering additional sides. Everything below except for the drinks, of course, are included in the omakase. Note that for the noodle option, we opted to have 1 hot and 1 cold instead of both being the same.

The Diamonds cocktail had soju, yellow chartreuse, grape, lemon, and club soda. It was similar to a sweet spritzer.

The Hite was served from draft. It’s always the perfect beer match for Korean flavors.

The steak and eggs was hand-cut filet mignon tartare with royal hybrid caviar and milk toast. The tartare was so good especially with the high quality cut. With the caviar, it was a perfect match made in heaven. The milk toast was very buttery, crispy, and light similar to Hong Kong style toast.

The cuts of meat starting right to left on the bottom row:

• Filet mignon which was very dense and tender with little to no fat or tendons.
• Hanger steak which had the typical hanger steak bounce in each bite. Hanger steak when it’s high quality and cooked medium rare is a very delicious and hard to beat cut of meat. This ranked very high on my satisfaction level tonight.
• 45 day dry age rib eye center cut which was a little chewy when you nibble on it. It was probably the worst piece of meat tonight of all the samples, but it was still very good.

The nicer cuts of meat starting right to left on the top row:

• 45 day dry age rib eye cap was stunning and memorable. It was a little fatter than the center cut, but it was soft, juicy, and had a fantastic flavor. The staff said that they do not sell this by itself.
• American wagyu Cote steak was unfortunately even chewier than the rib eye center cut. I couldn’t nibble on my piece at all and had to eat it in 1 bite. It was flavorful though.
• A5 Japanese wagyu was simply the best of the best of today’s meat options. It was soft, buttery, tender, and very rich. You can easily nibble on this slowly and cut through without any effort. Eating this with any condiments is completely superfluous. The waiter cooked it to a medium rare plus, and each bite still had a ton of juicy flavors pour out.

Not pictured after these cuts, they also served us Cote galbi. This was marinated in a sweet sauce and was super soft even after it was grilled.

The banchan included (left to right counter clockwise):

• scallion salad which included mixed greens and gochujang vinaigrette. Unlike other KBBQ places, this one was more rich in bite.
• cauliflower which was pickled and subtly sour.
• daikon which was like other KBBQ places’ daikon.
• pickles which were more sour than sweet.
• radish and jalapeño which were similar to the daikon but also had a light bite to it.
• red leaf lettuce and ssam-jang. There were some mint leaves in there if desired. You really don’t need the ssam-jang here as the meat tonight was seasoned in front of you with salt crystals and tasted delicious on their own.

They also grilled mushroom caps and rice cake. The mushroom caps, when grilled, begin to expose water in its belly and comes out as a small soup. The mushroom flavor was bland and tolerable, though my partner loved it. The rice cake was of course flavorless, and the outside shell was slightly crispy. Aside from texture, this seemed kind of random to include on the grill.

The savory egg soufflé was served in one of those hot clay pots with organic egg and kep yooksoo. It was pretty good though there was some uneven salt seasoning in it. I do think compared to other Korean BBQ places and even with the organic components, this was not something that impressed me by magnitudes.

Below, they served us 2 additional ban-chan side dishes: napa cabbage kimchi and kimchi daikon. The kimchi here was quite sharp, but I think I have had better at other places.

The bi-bim somyun on the left was served cold. it came with Korean angel hair, seaweed, lettuce, egg, and gochujang vinaigrette. The red gochujang vinaigrette gives it a nice sour peppery kick that is not powering and slightly on the subtle side. This also reminded me of when I had cold noodles in a South Korean mall shop that specialized in this dish. Everything here tasted more upscaled than that, but I definitely like the memories it instilled me with.

The jan-chi somyun on the right was served hot. It also came with Korean angel hair, anchove consummé, and thin egg strips. They give you some spicy hot seasonings if you want to increase the heat of the soup. The soup is light, clear, and fresh.

The soft serve was our dessert and was drizzled with soy sauce salted caramel. Because it was our anniversary dinner (the last one we had wasn’t what we really wanted), they gave us candles which was nice. They also gave us 2 watermelon pieces. The soft serve was delicious and not too sweet thankfully. The caramel was actually quite salty if eaten on its own, but with the soft serve, it suppresses it quite a bit. If I had to be picky, I do think the soy sauce in the caramel was a little too salty and unnecessary. The two red pieces were just watermelon cubes.

Regarding service, it was delightful, impeccable, and prompt.

Final Verdict

As a Korean BBQ restaurant, it’s good but not the best I’ve had.

However, don’t treat Cote like a normal Korean BBQ restaurant. It’s really not. Treat it more like a modernized Korean steakhouse with a meat tasting menu. You can easily eat all of the meats without lathering them in sauce because they’re all very flavorful. The Korean condiments and supplements are simply icing on the cake.

If you want to have fun with different meat cuts, definitely get the steak omakase. The Butcher’s Feast is also not too expensive for how much you get.

Yelp Jabs

Michelin star kbbq? … At the end of the day though, I can definitely say I’ve had better kbbq in LA for less, and I don’t think I’ll be coming back.

Set your expectations properly. If you had Korean BBQ with expensive meats, you’re really just wasting the meats. I would go here with the expectation that you are eating steak with a Korean experience.

They tell you upfront you have an hour and 30 minute limit and exactly what time that expires.

We actually didn’t have this issue, and it was just us 2. Maybe it was because we ordered the omakase or maybe not. Our total dining time was roughly around 1 hour 45 minutes. Understandably, they probably need to turn over tables faster to make up for the insane rent. I think for a standard KBBQ experience, just go to soemthing more of the usual.

We order the American Wagyu Ribeye ($65) and both of our Wagyu came room temp, flavorless and EXTREMELY CHEWY! I’ve had wagyu a million times and have made it a handful of times. It’s supposed to melt in your mouth.

Actually, no. American wagyu is not suppose to melt in your mouth unless you were eating a piece of fat. I’ve had multiple American wagyus, and it has never melt in your mouth. Try the A5 to see the difference.