My spouse and I dined at Atoboy for dinner on a Saturday
evening in late October 2019. Atoboy (pronounced ah-TOE-boy) is open daily for
dinner only. Diners can book a spot using the online Resy reservation system.
If your preferred time is not available (the restaurant is often booked solid),
you can sign up to be notified by email if space opens up (but all waiting
diners receive the same email at the same time, so you need to act quickly).
Atoboy opened in the summer of 2016 in the NoMad
neighborhood near the corner of East 28th Street and Park Avenue. It
occupies the street level of a block of buildings with storefronts on the
bottom and apartments/offices atop. The narrow but long space features polished
cement floors that add to the clean, industrial feel of the space. A small bar
occupies the front of the restaurant, while tables line the sides of each wall.
The restaurant is run by Chef Junghyun Park and his wife Ellia; they also operate
Korean fine-dining tasting-menu establishment Atomix. (We dined there in March
2019; see our separate review).
Atoboy serves a Korean tasting menu, where diners choose
three “banchan” (small dishes) for $46 that are served with white rice (or for
an additional $2, a seasonal rice, which was sweet potato on the night that we
dined). The menu is arranged in three sections, and patrons choose one dish
from each section. We shared the crab (topped with thinly sliced endive
drizzled in a yuzu sauce) and yellowtail (topped with radish and a citrus
mignonette), the fushimi (peppers similar to shishito mixed with dried shrimp,
cashews, and egg yolk) and the pork and shrimp (sliced pork topped with shrimp,
peppers, and cilantro), and the galbi (beef short rib topped with tiny crisp
sliced potato slices) and the pork belly (topped with enoki mushrooms and
fennel). For dessert, we ordered the sujeonggwa granita (a delicious and
unusual base of yogurt and burrata mixed with walnuts and topped with cinnamon
shaved ice); the restaurant graciously also presented us with a complimentary
pumpkin cheesecake because we were celebrating my spouse’s birthday. The food
was tasty and memorable. We also enjoyed a corn-flavored iced tea (refills were
complimentary) as well as a few beers (the restaurant has a full liquor
license). Service was excellent, and staff worked well together as a team.
We loved our dinner at Atoboy: great food and great service
in comfortable yet trendy surroundings.
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