Critics’ choice: Three small yet magical Korean restaurants

Sunn’s

New York City

“If you’re lucky, there will be scallops on the menu at Sunn’s,” said Ligaya Mishan in The New York Times. They’re exemplars of the enchantment of this tiny storefront in Chinatown, because chef Sunny Lee’s father dives for them in the chilly waters off Gloucester, Mass., and provides them to his daughter as a gift. Lee enhances the magic by tossing the raw scallops with fatty tuna, dark cherries, and white cloud-ear mushrooms in a color-conscious arrangement that’s at once pleasurably crunchy and spongy.

Her setup at Sunn’s is minimal: an induction burner, an oven, two rice cookers, and an under-counter fridge. Guests must share just six tables and eight stools. Lee’s menu is limited, too, “yet somehow there is a sense of abundance.” She stuffs dumplings with crab, chicken, and schmaltz, “giving them warming-from-within unctuousness.” She’s also “a master of banchan,” the small dishes that complete a Korean meal.

Sometimes, as you rub elbows with neighboring diners, “a communal exuberance takes hold, as if we were all in this together, this magic act of eking out a beautiful dinner in an under-equipped squeeze of a space.” 139 Division St. Shia Washington, D.C.

Shia

Washington, D.C.

At Edward Lee’s “gem” of a corner restaurant in the Union Market District, “some nights look like an evening out in Seoul,” said Tom Sietsema in The Washington Post. Look around and you’ll see its roughly three dozen seats filled with generations of Korean Americans who’ve come for the chef and cookbook author’s fantastic food, which blends authenticity and innovation.

A $90 five-course tasting menu is served at the bar, seven courses are served at $185 a head in the small dining room, and both begin with sweet-tart tea and an “exquisite” snack of a hot oyster and scallop wrapped in seaweed and accented with cool Asian pear and spicy ssamjang.

Next might come amberjack scrolls topped with a foam made from leftover kimchi liquid that demonstrates Shia’s no-waste ethos, which is evident if you’re looking for it but is never preached about. My meal included a seared braised sea bass in an “intoxicating” soup of crisp greens and broth coaxed from fish scraps, and the duck was another wonder, served in alternating slices with “gently crisp” mountain yam. 1252 4th St. NE.

Restaurant Ki

Los Angeles

Finding the way to this 12-seat chef’s counter “feels like a grown-up version of sneaking into a top-secret tree house,” said Cathy Park in The Infatuation. You must first locate Bar Sawa, a discrete Japanese omakase spot, then weave through a series of doors, including one marked “Employees Only.” But for $285 a head, you’ll enjoy a 12-course feast of modernist Korean cooking “that’s as exciting to watch come together as it is to eat.”

A team of cooks bounces to a soundtrack of Beyoncé and Flo Rida while chef-owner Ki Kim presides, stopping now and then to show you hunks of lamb or shiny lobster tails “before they’re sliced, torched, and delicately tweezed” into compelling compositions. “Traditional ingredients like doenjang and rice wine are sneakily and smartly remixed into luxurious creations accented with seafood and caviar.”

Not all is fancy. Lamb paired with stuffed morels is “pure comfort.” Sure, a meal at Ki “isn’t the most refined experience,” given the cost. But “what it lacks in polish it makes up for in enthusiasm and originality.” 111 S. San Pedro St.