How Chef Brian Baik of Corridor 109 is Rewriting the Rules of Fine Dining in L.A.
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On a recent evening at Bar 109, I’m sipping a briny gin martini garnished with pickled kombu. It’s a refreshing twist on the classic — and a harbinger of what’s still to come. While cocktails in a dark and sultry Melrose Hill bar is an alluring experience in its own right, I won’t be staying for long.
I’m biding my time before my dinner starts at Corridor 109, the 10-seat restaurant hidden behind a door at the bar, functioning as a reverse speakeasy. Corridor 109, which only has one seating nightly, is the playground for chef and owner Brian Baik’s much-buzzed-about 11-course tasting menu, which has been years in the making, from pop-up to brick-and-mortar.
It’s an L.A. homecoming in many ways for Baik, who discovered his passion for cooking not at his parents’ Kobawoo House — an iconic Koreatown restaurant known for its bossam — but in New York, working in the kitchens of some of the most lauded fine-dining restaurants in the world: Eleven Madison Park, Bouley, the Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare, and Sushi Noz. The throughline for these contemporary French and Japanese restaurants was the mentors who nurtured Baik’s growing curiosity and reverence for pristine-quality seafood.
Corridor 109’s tasting menu can’t be neatly summed up as an omakase or Korean food. It’s singularly Baik. “The concept is bringing my different cooking experiences together into what I believe to be my own style and format, and sharing the ingredients that I’m passionate about,” he says.
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Setting the stage
At 7 p.m., the restaurant staff gently corrals us through the nondescript door that transports us into Baik’s world. As we round a corner, we enter the 800-square-foot space — both a kitchen and dining room — designed in conjunction with Montalba Architects (whose projects have included Nobu Malibu).
The open kitchen is flanked by a charcoal-hued plastered wall textured with brushstrokes. A glowing box of light shines over a prep station, spotlighting Baik and his small team as they whirl from it to the stoves and charcoal grill. The walnut counter where diners sit, just feet away from all the action, is also illuminated by light in an otherwise shadow-filled room. There’s an intimate relationship between diner and chef in this stage-like performance. It’s minimalistic with pops of surprising details, a mirror to Baik’s cooking.
Creating an open kitchen format was a key element for Baik, who holds his ingredients in such high regard that he wants to get the dishes to his diners as soon as they’re made. “The proximity of the open kitchen — being able to turn around the dish to our guests at the right temperature and peak moment in time — [is important] so that they can enjoy how it’s meant to be enjoyed,” he says.
Seafood is the star
The show begins. The first dish, a tartlet filled with salmon mousse and dotted with bright orange orbs of cured roe, bursts with enlivening salinity. A diner next to me breaks out into a smile, and excitement bubbles around the room.
Right before Baik’s signature dish, the aji toast, arrives at the counter, a couple leans over to tell me that this is the moment they’ve been waiting for. The line-caught horse mackerel drapes over a spread of aioli and pickled red peppers on toasted house-made milk bread. The results are a vibrant symphony of textures and flavors. Baik says the pinxtos-inspired toast is an amalgamation of everywhere he’s cooked, and he prepares the fish with the skills he learned at Sushi Noz.
Baik isn’t trying to procure rare and obscure ingredients. He instead pours his time and energy into sourcing the best seafood, from fatty channel rockfish to delicate striped jack, working directly with vendors in Japan. It’s the sum of the parts that make Baik’s dishes sing. “If you think about the math of fine dining, it’s like, one plus one equals two, and then there’s one plus one plus one equals three,” says Baik. “A lot of those small things don’t really make sense, but they end up making a big difference in the overall experience.”
Each of the dishes, as simply as they are presented, are sprinkled with surprises, like a soy-marinated skipjack tuna served over a nest of pesto spaghetti with a dollop of grated ginger that adds an energizing zing that balances out the richness. Baik saves his seared full-blood Australian wagyu as the penultimate course, accompanied by an umami-punched oxtail jus and shiso sauce. The dinner ends with an Asian pear sorbet on Champagne jello — a lighter course that serves as a breather after a two-hour culinary journey.
The tasting menu is complemented by an extensive wine list from consulting Master Sommelier Michael Engelmann. It focuses on varietals from small-production, family-owned estates — many of which practice thoughtful farming practices — stemming mostly from France, with a smattering of Japanese sake options as well. The full wine menu, which can also be found at Bar 109, has about 100 bottles with over a handful of by-the-glass options.
While there isn’t a wine pairing for the tasting menu just yet (though plans are in the works for one in the future), for now, the servers can guide you toward bottles that go well with the food. For example, I enjoyed the dry and crisp La Rogerie’s Turckheim Schneid Riesling at the start of the meal, and ended on Régis Rossignol’s spiced pinot noir. However, since Corridor 109 is a nascent business working with wineries producing on a small scale, they don’t carry a large number of these bottles. What’s there one day may be sold out another, which only adds to the spirit of discovery.
A more laid-back experience
Despite the restaurant’s minimalism, the atmosphere is more lively than what you might expect from a room with only 10 diners. The music, which Baik curates, progresses from indie-dance-pop bands like LCD Soundsystem and Cannons to underground hip hop like Ugly Duckling. I was mainly surrounded by couples, some of whom were willing to brave traffic from as far as Orange County on a weeknight. They chatted with one another about how long they’d been trying to snag a reservation. One diner had been eyeing Corridor 109 for years.
In 2019, when Baik was living in New York and planning his return to L.A. to help his aging parents at Kobawoo, he started dreaming of what he could do for himself. “There was a moment where I wasn’t sure whether or not I was going to stay in L.A. or move back to New York,” says Baik. “I didn’t know if L.A. would have the audience for the type of food that I had an interest in cooking, and I didn’t want to compromise.”
He started hosting pop-ups in 2021 on Monday nights at Kobawoo when the restaurant was closed. Longtime Kobawoo customers unaware that a private dinner was taking place would wander in, and Baik ended up having to lock the front door and have his diners enter through the side entrance. As a nod to Passage 53 — a tiny Parisian restaurant tucked away in a passageway — Baik named his concept Corridor 109, in homage to Kobawoo’s suite number. In the beginning, he struggled a bit to spread the word about his concept, but everything changed when Eater L.A. published a story about it. “Overnight, we had 400 reservation requests,” says Baik.
He later ran a test kitchen in Chinatown, and then closed it to build out his current Melrose Hill space, which occupies a former furniture store.
The roots that connect us
When the soft-spoken Baik walks around introducing himself and telling diners about his background, there are guests who share that they’re longtime fans of Kobawoo. The diners include L.A. locals, and Southern California transplants with roots in Korea, China, and New Zealand. There are seafood aficionados, artists, and parents looking for a much-needed night out, who connect with the chef’s story and his style in the kitchen.
Even though Baik says most of his culinary training isn’t in Korean cuisine, he notes that Kobawoo has almost subconsciously influenced his palate. “Growing up as a Korean American around my parents’ restaurant and having spent so much time eating that food, I have a certain taste profile where I definitely focus on flavor,” he says. “Sometimes flavors are very subtle and sometimes very bold.”
Corridor 109’s location on Western Avenue is right across the street from the border of Koreatown and a mile away from where Kobawoo first opened in 1983, near Beverly Boulevard and Normandie Avenue. “It feels very full circle that I opened my own restaurant in close proximity to where I spent so much time as a kid,” says Baik.
In his own way, Baik is carrying on his family’s legacy, pushing forward a new vision of fine dining in L.A., with one foot in the past and one firmly planted in the future.
