It is an extremely challenging task to review a restaurant of someone you already know. You want to be unbiased in your review (while ignoring potential freebies or other perks that could cloud your judgment), but also don’t want any part of your review to negatively affect the relationship with the person. My wife Jun has known Brian Baik for a while since New York City. After working at Eleven Madison Park, the Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare and Sushi Noz (where we last saw him in 2019), Brian moved back to LA where his family runs the K-town institution Kobawoo House. After operating pop-up dinners at Kobawoo, he recently opened a permanent restaurant Corridor 109 in the fall of 2025 (there is also Bar 109 at the front part of the restaurant). As we were planning the restaurants for our LA trip, Jun said she really wanted to check out the restaurant and say hi to Brian so on our last day in LA (which happened to be a Tuesday, more on this later), we visited Corridor 109. We had a truly wonderful time, dazzled by Brian’s creative and well-executed cooking.

Corridor 109 is a small chef’s table counter featuring mostly seafood, many of them sourced directly from Japan (one staff member told us the restaurant is closing during the parts of the year when the seafood market in Japan where many of the products comes from closes). While Brian had a couple of support staffs on the kitchen, it was really mostly a one-man show. His personal touch evolved from all the training at some of the best restaurants in New York stood out throughout the meal, starting with a spiny lobster tartlet (with all its wonderfully crunchy texture of the Santa Barbara lobster) that already made a statement. One of Jun’s favorite dishes of the night was a surprise; even though mackerel is probably the last fish she would eat on Earth, she was stunned by how delicious the horse mackerel toast (inspired by pintxos from Spain’s Basque Country) was. My favorite, on the other hand, was monkfish liver accompanied by flounder (with cucumber and marmalade) on top of seaweed sheet. The soft and creamy texture of the monkfish liver was already delicious on its own, but the flavor combination after I put some of it on the seaweed wrap was unlike anything I had experienced before!

Another thing that impressed me was how Brian so skillfully used side ingredients to maximize the flavor of the main seafood ingredient, like the way mountain yam (yamaimo) sauce superbly complemented the Spanish mackerel (sawara), or the way ginger played an essential role in neutralizing a potentially heavy flavor of pesto spaghetti with skipjack tuna on top. Jun, who is a fan of Korean seaweed soup miyeok-guk, was very moved by Brian’s playful take on the bowl with red tilefish. There was no forgettable dish throughout the dinner, with other dishes such as fried blowfish (fugu) cooked Karaage style (this was a bonus course off the menu), scallop with aromatic clam broth and risotto (also made with clam broth) with amberjack (buri) making strong impressions. The savory course wrapped up with NY strip cut of wagyu (on the chewier side but nonetheless delicious), and the dessert ended with Asian pear sorbet with champagne gelee. At the end of the meal, we saw that Brian started to grill burger patties. It turned out that on Tuesdays after 10 p.m., the restaurant serves burgers for the diners as well as guests at the bar. Even though we were pretty full by then, we decided to share one burger and neither of us regretted it, with juicy patty more or less perfectly grilled.

We secured our reservation directly through Brian; given that there is only one shift on Thursday and Friday (and two on Saturday), getting a reservation will require advance planning. The minimalistic aesthetics of the dining room worked very well together with the overall character of the dishes coming out of the open kitchen. The wine and sake lists looked also pretty impressive, although as a wine aficionado I would’ve loved to see a pairing menu dedicated just to wine, not just a mix of wine and sake. You can of course also get cocktails and spirits directly from Bar 109. At the end of our meal, we had a chance to speak to Brian for a while. Jun told him how proud she was to see him open his own project with some truly memorable dishes. I couldn’t agree more than Corridor 109 is a special restaurant and am glad that both Jun and I are able to wholeheartedly endorse it without any potential bias from our relationship with Brian. We will certainly visit again next time when we are in LA, and can’t wait to see what he has in store for us then.

KenScale: 8.75/10 (Jun’s Score: 8.75/10)

Address: 641 N Western Ave Ste A, Los Angeles, CA 90004

Website: https://www.corridor109.com/

Reservation via Tock