Kimika — Restaurant in New York

Somewhat innovative but fails to deliver on taste. Also overpriced for the quality of food.

Tuna Tartare

Pros: -texture was interesting and balanced

Cons: -salty -felt like it could really use a touch of acid

Overall a pretty tasty and innovative dish. I would argue it was the only passable dish of the night.

Roe roe roe spaghetti

Pros: -creamy

Cons: -it had an overwhelmingly unpleasant fishy taste. Don’t get me wrong, I loooove mentaiko and all kinds of fish roe. I’ve had plenty of mentaiko spaghetti in my life in Japanese restaurants. They’ve always had a pleasant fishy taste. The spaghetti at Kimika had an unpleasant, stale fishy taste. I can’t tell if it’s from the lack of freshness of the fish roe, or just poor preparation. -first plate we had was undercooked. And I’m not talking al dente—the spaghetti was raw in the centre. Every bite was crunchy because of the rawness and there was an overwhelming taste of raw wheat flour. Very unpleasant. When we sent it back, the server said it was meant to be cooked this way. Was it meant to be served slightly raw? Perhaps it was meant to be interesting texturally, but I am personally not the biggest fan of raw spaghetti. -when they re-served the spaghetti, we noticed they literally re-cooked the portion we had left in the plate. To give some context, Kimika is all about family-style eating so we served out about half the spaghetti initially before tasting it and realizing it was raw. This meant that about half the initial plate was basically wasted—not the worst thing in the world, but slightly annoying that we only got to eat 50% of a plate of $30 spaghetti

This dish was a train wreck from start to end.

Crispy rice cake lasagne

Pros: -lovely texture. The crisp alongside the chewiness of the rice cake makes for a delightful bite.

Cons: -so salty. It’s hard to taste any dimensionality in food when the salt is so forward. Entire lasagne was overwhelmingly salty that I couldn’t taste anything else

This dish was pretty mediocre.

Yakult soft serve

Pros: -fruit was nice and tart and was a good balance to the sweetness of the ice cream

Cons: -very little (if any) yakult taste. Tastes like a generic sweet soft serve -crispy chicken skin is interesting in theory, but terribly executed. It tasted like stale oil, which was not a great addition to ice cream. I can definitely see it being interesting texturally, but Kimika’s rendition of it hit none of the marks.

Service

Pros: -water refills were plentiful -always easy to get a server’s attention

Cons: -waited about 30 minutes for dessert—which I can understand, sometimes things go awry. It would have been nice to get some notice in the first 20+ minutes of waiting that there was a kitchen delay instead of in the last 5 minutes.

For $50 per person pre-tip and tax, you can find far better food elsewhere. My neighborhood Japanese restaurant serves a fresher tuna tartare and mentaiko spaghetti for half the price. Kimika was barely worth a first visit for me, and definitely not...

This is a long review so if you don’t read any further, just know this: don’t come here if you expect good and tasty food. AND do not order the steak. AND expect everything to be overpriced.

Now, onto the review. I had this on my list to try for months and now I’m sad to say I regret going. I went with a friend for dinner and we dined inside. The decor and vibe were very nice, and the menu seemed very appealing, so before the food came, I thought it was going to be an excellent dining experience. I was wrong!

The waitress suggested we order 4-6 dishes. We originally just ordered 3 dishes (the tuna tartare $26, the soy butter bigoli $26, and the ribeye $79), but she upsold us by saying we should get the cabbage Mille foglie $11 to pair with the ribeye. The tuna came first and it was the best dish we had by far. It was creamy and the seaweed was delicate and crisp. However, if you’re craving something like this, just skip kimika and go to Jeju noodle bar for their toro ssam bap, it’s better there. For the entrees, we got the bigoli first, and it was good, but it was way too salty. The steak and cabbage came next and both were almost appalling. The steak was dry and looked artificially square. The taste and texture was similar to biltong (beef jerky), which, for $79, should be a crime. The meat quality itself was not good. There was a prominent amount of sinew/ silverskin on the side of the meat and it was tough and chewy. The fat was not evenly marbled throughout the meat, and was instead distributed in big globs throughout the meat. If you’re going to sell a $79 steak in nyc, it better be good. The cabbage was also pretty bad. It was way too salty, and the flavor profile/ concept was very strange. The dish was basically little pieces of cabbage and prosciutto layered together with anise powder sprinkled on top. However, it was steamed, so the prosciutto got weird and wet. Imagine eating steamed prosciutto with anise on top….weird. You couldn’t even taste the cabbage bc the salt and anise were so overpowering. We didn’t finish either the steak or cabbage, even though we were still hungry.

As far as price point, I have no problem spending some extra money to have an excellent dining experience and have delicious and inventive food. I’ve lived in NYC for 6 years and I know that dining can be expensive, and I’m not new to upscale dining. That being said, our bill came to $200 without any drinks and it was just not worth it. If I’m going to spend that much money, I expect a high quality dining experience. The only dish that was worth its price was the tuna tartare. Do yourself a favor and skip kimika and walk to any one of the numerous delicious cheap eats nearby on Bowery or Chinatown. You’ll save $$$ and be fuller than I was when I left kimika.

Giving 2 stars instead of 1 because the decor and vibe were nice. And the service was good...

Came to Kimika for brunch on a Saturday at 12pm with a party of 2 (with reservation).

The restaurant itself looks light, clean and sleek!

My friend and I shared the Tamago Sando ($10). We both really liked it!

I had the Matcha Mochi French Toast ($17). It was sweet and heavy on the stomach, but that’s not a bad thing, that’s with any French toast. I’m very happy I tried it, as it had been on my list for a very long time! I had 6 bites left and took them to go with me, because I’m not big on wasting food.

My friend had the Souffle Pancakes ($17) and she enjoyed and finished hers. I took a bite of hers and it tasted really good! I liked the flavor and the fluffiness of it!

The reason why I’m giving 4 stars (would’ve been 4.5 if I could) instead of 5 stars is because:

1. The male waiter acted a bit strange. For example pulling away a plate that I had positioned on the table for a specific reason. It just came off a bit rude.

2. It also was a bit weird that the Tamago Sando and my dish, the Matcha Mochi French Toast, came out together at the same time. So obviously I waited for my friend’s dish, the Souffe Pancakes, before eating mine. There was simply no way for the French Toast and the Souffle Pancakes to come out together for whatever reason.

3. Not really the restaurant’s entire fault, but at some point 2 other parties were seated on each side from us and we could barely hear each other speak from that point on. This resulted in all parties speaking even louder. So having conversations was quite difficult and annoying. They could’ve spread out the earlier parties, there was enough seating left from what I can remember.

In the end I did enjoy my brunch, although it wasn’t perfect. Service was fast and decent (the kind & female waitress definitely made up for her male colleague). We also found the prices to be very affordable.

I do recommend everyone interested for brunch to give...