Went to Kochi (NY, 1*) over the July 4th long weekend. What a lovely experience! I'm lactose intolerant which is always a bummer for eating out and usually how accomodating they are is a good indication of how the meal is gonna go. They had completely off-the-menu dishes for me where no dairy-free option was available (e.g. there's an ice-cream dish in the tasting menu which I obviously couldn't have). They also replaced the frozen yoghurt dessert with a non-dairy frozen yoghurt which, frankly, I didn't know that was a thing?

The whole meal was both very tasty, and, surprisingly, actually a lot of food.

The only thing that was a bit odd was that the table next to us seemed to be some very VIP's - they got free champagne when sitting down and multiple hand-crafted additions to the tasting menu - i'm talking heaps of caviar (one of the dishes was a small portion of -delicious- caviar - they ended up getting a huge spoonful of caviar added to a SECOND dish), gold-flakes (why?!) etc. Guess you can feel second-class even at a Michelin-starred restaurant!

And no, they definitely didn't request these things, because they were very surprised and grateful to get them, too!