Koi Bryant Park, New York Review

Having enjoyed our experience at Koi in Soho, we were very excited to try the original New York Koi, located inside the Bryant Park Hotel.

This restaurant boasts a fabulous atmosphere, with a stylish, on-trend interior. For that reason, this restaurant has a really up-beat ambiance, and makes for an excellent evening.

We were very much looking forward to the food, and couldn’t wait to be seated and for our meal to begin. To start, we went for a California roll, a tuna roll, the Koi crispy rice topped with spicy tuna (that was so good at the Soho Koi that we simply couldn’t resist!), and the seafood dumplings. Again, as we expected, the food was incredible.

“The experience definitely matched our expectations from the Soho restaurant.”

For our main courses, we the opted for the roasted duck breast with ginger vinaigrette, roasted shishito potatoes and peppers; and the peppercorn filet mignon with roasted shishito potato puree and a plum wine demi glaze. On the side, we went for the grilled Japanese eggplant, and again, there were no complaints from us.

A particular highlight of our evening, however, came with dessert. We opted for the Chef’s selection of desserts, which included New York cheesecake, vanilla crème brûlée and the most incredible flourless molten chocolate cake with a leopard print glaze on top. It was visually stunning!

We also enjoyed a selection of cocktails throughout out meal, including the Spiked Lemonade, a Blue Sky, a Lychee Martini and a Moon Blossom – each one as delicious as the last.

We were certainly not disappointed with our visit to the original Koi restaurant, and the experience definitely matched our expectations from the Soho restaurant. The Koi restaurants hold that special balance of a super-cool atmosphere with excellent food, and we couldn’t recommend them highly enough. We can’t wait to go back.