Abiko Curry is a Japanese curry restaurant that I had visited before in Koreatown way back in September of 2018. We were near the neighborhood, and I thought to check it out again. I remembered the curry and flavors being one of my favorite Japanese curry places in the city, but I also remembered that the “medium spicy” level was uncomfortably intense. This time around, I want to give it another try to see if I can get a better feel for it.

We had to run errands around Macy’s, so this was a good chance to check out some restaurant that was fairly light and also didn’t have strong smells. We were able to walk in on a Saturday at 5:30 PM with no reservations. We noticed the menus had both skewers and hot pot as options. I saw that many people ordered hot pot with cotton candy on top, and we contemplated briefly but decided not to.

As we enter the end of the year and NYC indoor dining is forced to be shutdown due to a COVID uptick, we wanted to get some last fixin with Korean BBQ. Even though we have tried many of the major Korean BBQ restaurants near Koreatown already, this is one of the few remaining ones to try. When we visited, they check your temperature and had glass dividers between tables.

It’s the evening and where could be a good place to get fairly traditional Cantonese style Chinese food? Dim Sum Palace! The pork ribs (páigǔ; 排骨) is pretty decent. It came out piping hot with a lump of black bean that probably was suppose to be mixed in the sauce. It’s a little different than other dim sum places, but still pretty good. The salted pepper prawns were really good.

The vibe here is pretty cool if you’re into old school jazz environments. The walls have a load of records and lots of old music devices. It does get a little noisy, and sometimes people eat really slow to create a wait. It’s not too different than other typical Korean bar/chicken joints where they have lots of alcohol and Korean bar foods. The drinks were ok. Started off with a passionfruit lemonade.

This place is interesting. It’s like a modern version of typical Korean tapas. They have these idea cocktails that have flashing lights underneath it. You can click on the switch underneath to alter the different lighting patterns. It’s gimmicky, but I’m sure they are targeting that photo crowd. The drinks themselves were OK. I think I prefer Brazilian style fruit cocktails now. The hamachi cevichee was decent. It’s just tartare with a different flavor profile, but otherwise, it tasted like what you’d expect.

Pretty decent Korean BBQ. Also a bit expensive, and not as good as Let’s Meat. Let’s Meat

Pretty decent Korean BBQ. A bit expensive, but everything was good.

Pretty good. No Korean rice wrap, but meat quality was good.

Desserts are pretty good, but I don’t get why there is always a line here. The milk tea was just ok. The donuts were good.