Korean – Writing With My Mouth Full

Danji

346 West 52nd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues
212/586.2880
$66 for my share with 2 others, with drinks, with tip
♥ ♥

Tastiest:
1. Spicy whelk salad with buckwheat noodles – just enough saltiness and spiciness. It’s refreshing to see whelks on the menu.
2. Poached sablefish with spicy daikon – reminded me of a wonderful dish I had at Tojo’s in Vancouver, only not as much finesse
3. Tofu with ginger-scallion dressing – I couldn’t tell what kind of tofu it was because it was stringy. I wondered if it was the fried batter that made it so because it had the texture of mozzarella cheese.
4. Makgeolli, or Korean rice beer – They called it rice beer, but I read that it’s mostly referred to as rice wine. It’s quite thin but milky, and the sourness and sweetness are both very subtle.

Most boring:
1. Kimchi-bacon-chorizo “paella” with fried egg – I think they called it paella because it was on a sizzling plate, but it reminded me of a dish you make with your leftovers topped with a fried egg. It’s good–just not worth $16.

Overrated:
1. Bulgogi sliders – Even Ruth Reichl wrote a poem about them, but it’s still the same bulgogi flavor you get outside of the Los Angeles area: a little too sweet and lazy

Service:
The maître d’ was impatient when the place was crowded from about 6:30pm until 9pm. She just had it from every customer insisting they were the next ones to be seated. We never saw her again until my friend ordered another glass of Riesling, but the entire staff was more attentive after the dinner rush was over.

Arirang Home-made Noodle House

32 West 32nd Street, 3rd floor, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues
212/967.5088
$10 for a large bowl of soup
♥ ♥

The key is the “home-made” part in the restaurant’s name. Don’t let the office space turn you off. I know it looks like a fire hazard in there but an hour of your life in danger is worth it for the kalguksu, or “knife noodles”, the wheat-flour noodles that are cut instead of extruded or spun. They’re soft and plump and they easily give without falling apart when swished in the hot broth.

Don’t miss out on any of Arirang’s kar-jeabe, a combination of kalguksu and sujebi, dumpling skin look-alikes that have been torn to smaller pieces. They simmer all the ingredients together for a very long time resulting into the most complicated broth you’ll ever taste. The gingery taste in the chicken broth is good if you’re feeling down this winter. They come in large bowls that could easily be split between two people unless you’re eating with a hungry Korean doctor.

Sik Gaek Restaurant

161-29 Crocheron Avenue, Flushing, Queens
718/321.7770
$40 per person for a group of 11, with drinks, with tip
♥ ♥

For one of the Dr.’s birthday celebrations this year, I gathered his favorite people together to share a table at Sik Gaek Restaurant in Flushing, Queens. Everyone had just seen the Anthony Bourdain NYC Outer Borough episode and the cut with Momofuku’s David Chang was the talk of the food world. Because of the hype, I didn’t need to convince our friends to make the trek and even rent a couple of Zip Cars to get there.

I had called a few weeks earlier to save us one of the tables in the corner nook. The restaurant had its loyal following even before the No Reservations episode aired, but seats are even more in demand now. The guy on the phone warned me that if my party was late, they will give up our table–we all came 10 minutes early and they immediately seated us and got us fried eggs for appetizers with cold beers.

If you’ve seen the episode, you know that the main attraction is the live octopus. As much as I liked the cephalopod’s texture in my mouth and the sticky tentacles on my tongue, the hit for me was the seafood pot that was filled with mussels and clams. The broth in the end after every shellfish was consumed and discarded was superb. I just wanted a bowl of it while curled under my warm down comforter.

We also ordered the usual fare of Korean barbecue and kimchi chigae and shared several kinds of panjans, or side dishes. The beer and soju did not stop coming, and soon enough, the Dr. was wearing the restaurant’s house ‘fro while they played the Happy Birthday song in both Korean and English. It was a good family meal with good company.

Momofuku Ko

163 First Avenue off 10th Street
https://reservations.momofuku.com/
about $300 for two, with beverage pairings, without tip
♥ ♥ ♥

I was so busy at work last week that I didn’t even have time to be excited about our upcoming reservations at Ko. When Cameron told me she wanted to take me out to thank me for showing her the Philippines last month, I thought, You’re welcome; don’t be silly. But when I received an email from her a couple of weeks later with our Ko confirmation attached, I squealed, Noooooo.

I gave up trying to get a reservation the first time I actually saw a green check mark on their Web site. As soon as I clicked it, I waited nervously for the page to refresh, and then, Sorry, that spot was just taken. It’s like waiting for your lottery numbers to show up on TV: the ball rolls out and you think it’s one of your picks; only it’s a 6 and not a 9 when it finally stops spinning. Momofuku Ko is the first restaurant I know of that uses only a Web site to take reservations and I suppose it’s a good way to keep the die-hard David Chang fans excited. All of us need someone who is willing to click their mouse off once in a while.

At 6:15 sharp, we were seated in the middle of the bar with a couple to our left and a group of four at the other end. The other seats were waiting for the 6:30pm guests–stacking them up this way is their version of turning tables over efficiently. By the time we were eating our fourth course, a newly arrived couple to our right was pouring over the wine list. The night’s pace was swift; our matching wines, beer and sake kept coming until the first of two desserts. I felt like I had to keep drinking to have no more than two glasses on my table. Although I played catch up with my drinks, I kept up with all eleven courses, including the bouches. The portions weren’t French Laundry nor Blue Hill sizes. I wasn’t comatose at the end of our two-hour meal. Perhaps a little tipsy, but quite happy and content. Here’s a rundown:

1. A delicately small toasted English muffin with pork fat and chives
2. A Ssam tribute of pig’s head torchon with mustard

One of the first two came with a light and crunchy chicharron and Japanese salt.

3. Fluke sashimi in buttermilk (!) with Sriracha hot sauce and yuzu paste covered in poppy seeds
4. Matsutake mushrooms in hot broth of bacon and dashi, a dish that reminded me of Tojo’s sable fish soup in Vancouver.
5. A beautifully smoked soft-boiled egg with onion sous-vide and caviar served with potato chips
6. An out of place corn-filled ravioli with Cotija Mexican cheese; I liked it more than I expected.
7. Maine halibut in pepperoncini purée and burnt onions with finely-chopped kohlrabi and radish in basil oil
8. Lychee with Riesling gelée and pine nuts and then covered in grated foie gras. Grated. Foie. Gras. This dish blew me away and I couldn’t stop talking about it. Everything melded in my mouth like Dippin’ Dots, only more luxurious and decadent than anything I’ve had this year. “Son of a peach” indeed.
9. Perfectly, perfectly cooked duck–the surly Asian man behind the counter (who wasn’t David Chang) had skills–with Chinese long beans, chestnuts and bean sprouts in cherry sauce.
10. Lychee sorbet in sesame “sand”; my quotes but perhaps a Thomas Keller-influenced naming convention
11. Strawberry and peanut butter halva with a sickeningly sweet yellow cake ice cream. I told you, I don’t like sweets.

David Chang is so lucky to be the name on almost every foodie’s tongue today: five years in the east Village and he’s still making waves. Ko is obviously his and his staff’s playground and you can feel that they’re cooking for themselves and serving what they want because they know people will follow. I can’t help but feel proud that this Asian American is at the top of his career right now. How I wish all talented and deserving chefs out there get the same chance to cook and perform the Momofuku way.

Momofuku Noodle Bar

171 1st Avenue between 10th and 11th Streets
212/777-7773
about $58 for two, with one beer, with tip
â™¥ â™¥

Updated: My bad. Momofuku Ko is still under construction in what used to be the original space of Momofuku Noodle Bar. Thanks, Zach.

Is there a stronger English word than savory that can describe the taste that is Momofuku? What I’m looking for is the translation for malinamnam, the Tagalog word for something really flavorful and delicious at the same time. What was Momofuku Noodle Bar is now a much larger and brighter space with more items in the menu that do not involve noodles. They needed it too, with all the accolades chef David Chang and his restaurants have been receiving the last couple of years. But that more-than-savory taste is still there.

A bowl of grilled baby octopus was tender. Julienned carrots and some seaweed were mixed in and made the dish more interesting. I thought the sesame seeds were a nice touch. They were out of the Brussels sprouts when I visited, so we ordered the Manila clams instead made pretty with slivers of celery.

I could have stopped there but every time I’m visiting one of the Momofukus, I can’t help but stuff myself. Even at more than $10, the big bowl of pork neck ramen with a beautifully-poached egg is a must-have. And it was as malinamnam as I remembered it from two stores down.