From New York Times, December 6, 2009
One of the most talked-about restaurant books of the season is David Chang’s MOMOFUKU (Clarkson Potter, $40). In five years, this 32-year-old New York chef has built an empire on inspired, porky excess. Chang’s Virginia upbringing, upscale restaurant experience and love of certain Korean and Japanese flavors result in the kind of dishes that will jam your eyeballs into the back of your head, like brussels sprouts with bacon and kimchi puree. This fawningly produced book, written with the former New York Times “$25 and Under” reviewer Peter Meehan (who contributes the Grass Fed column to the blog of T: The New York Times Style Magazine), is fueled by Chang’s hard-core attitude and punctuated with a “Hell’s Kitchen” season’s worth of unprintable words. The dude’s intense, and he wants you to know it. The food is intense, too, especially as the recipes increase in difficulty as the chapters move up the Momofuku restaurant scale, from Noodle Bar to Ssam Bar to Ko.
It’s exciting to think that thousands of American kitchens will soon be stocked with dashi, kochukaru and fish sauce. It’s even more exciting to think that some people will confit chicken wings in five cups of pork fat and attempt the cassoulet-level marathon that is Momofuku ramen. For those just in it for the coolness (or without access to an Asian market), you don’t need to make tare or ramen broth: the easy ginger-scallion sauce and miso butter are keepers. In both food and tone, “Momofuku” encapsulates an exciting moment in New York dining. In 20 years, when we’re all eating McKimchi burgers and drinking cereal milk, we’ll look back fondly on the time when neurotic indie stoners and their love of Benton’s bacon changed the culinary landscape.
