Most kimbap is designed to be portable, filling and inexpensive. Ms. Park’s kimbap, on the other hand, is built for pleasure. She has a pickled vegetable kimbap on the lunch menu that is truly exciting; you are meant to dip it in a dark liquid that tastes a bit like soy sauce but is made with beets. The dinner menu brings kimbap filled with chives, pickled daikon, citrus jelly and a buttery pink vein of foie gras terrine. Has this really never been done before, you wonder as you eat it, and if not, why not?

Among the other gussied-up raw fish that you expect in Momofukuland, like a refreshing if somewhat staid madai tartare, are some dime-size clams in chile sauce and an elegant, inspired interpretation of gejang. Blue crab legs and claw are cracked and given a three-day soak in soy sauce, among other things, which gives them an impressive amount of flavor. Then, in case you haven’t noticed that you’re dealing with a real chef, Ms. Park stirs the crab’s roe with creamy rice and spoons this Korean risotto into the open belly of the shell.

At moments like this, or in the hwedupbap filled with raw fish as strikingly good as any you’ll find in a $200 omakase, or in the doenjang jjigae, a potful of braised fermented bean paste with pork belly that appears on the menu as “yesterday’s stinky soybean stew” and manages to be homespun and polished at the same time, it’s possible to see Kawi as Ms. Park’s response to Atomix. It’s as if she had looked at Junghyun Park’s dazzlingly complex compositions at his year-old modern Korean restaurant and decided that she could cook in a style that was every bit as modern and painstaking, but that instead of turning traditional dishes into tasting-menu food she would keep the old forms and innovate inside them.

With her tidy, refined, French-influenced neo-traditionalism, Ms. Park could become something like the Alain Ducasse of Korean cooking. It’s not obvious, though, that Kawi needs an Alain Ducasse. Certain appetizers seem to belong on another planet, more beautiful and gentle than ours, such as the soft tofu with soy syrup that, sitting under a shattering thin crust of caramelized sugar, is like a savory crème brûlée by way of Seoul. And there are others, such as the sticks of fried cod that a server pointlessly snips in half with scissors and then spritzes with atomized yuzu juice, that are right at home at Hudson Yards.

The presentation seemed forced. That could also describe the boiled chicken dish, one of the menu’s showiest items and, at $64, one of its most expensive. The whole bird is steamed, then the breast is sliced and served plain while the dark meat is fried and coated with spices. Neither is spectacular on its own, and the combination is bizarre.

More successful versions of elaborate, oversize, multicomponent dishes are proven moneymakers elsewhere in the Momofuku republic. But arm-waving platters like that seem out of place at Kawi, which is the least Momofukian of the Momofukus.

The most uncharacteristic thing of all is that the dining room has never been operating at anything close to capacity, at least when I’ve been there. Maybe tables are being kept off the reservation books to give the cooks time to learn where the spice cabinet is. Or maybe the fans who are so devoted to Mr. Chang’s downtown spots are still trying to figure out the escalators.

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