In the middle of quiet suburban Milford is a Korean restaurant that chef Jason Kim opened at the beginning of last year. Tokki — which means ‘rabbit’ in Korean — is housed in a minimal dining room, so sparsely decorated that the food is the only real object to focus on. It’s a good thing, then, that the food is so good: confident and refined, with recognisably Korean flavours, and ingredients that lean more smoky and earthy (sometimes a bit spiky) than what you find at other gochujang-forward Korean restaurants in Auckland. The raw fish (hwe), for example, is doused in a hot Korean mustard (gyeoja), and the palm-sized ssam — a cradle of coal-kissed pork, rice and pickle — is a perfectly balanced mouthful that leaves you contemplating whether you should have added a couple more to your order. 

Tokki is a tight operation, with just one front-of-house staff member and a few people in the kitchen. And yet it’s clearly an ambitious project, reflecting Kim’s fine-dining background and his desire to showcase Korean cuisine. Alongside the delicately thoughtful food, there’s an impressive drinks list — the wine options spanning eight pages — and a long page of whiskies to boot. The night we visited, the other diners ranged from young kids jumping up and down on the booths waiting for their Melona s’more dessert to be blow-torched and delivered to them, to multi-generation families reminiscing over long, luscious flat noodles, to couples on date night, splitting a bottle of wine. A near-perfect neighbourhood restaurant, full of crowd-pleasing details and we’re sure Milford is glad to have it.