Skip to content, or skip to search.
Skip to content, or skip to search.
Home > Restaurants >
|
|
Sun-Wed, 11:30am-3:30pm and 5pm-midnight; Fri-Sat, 11:30am-3:30pm and 5pm-2am
L at Third Ave.; L at First Ave.
$8-$15
American Express, MasterCard, Visa
Not Accepted
Like Mario Batali and the great British chef Fergus Henderson, David Chang is a card-carrying member of the “Refined Meathead” school of cooking. Meathead chefs have a fondness for pork products and for offal (“We do not serve vegetarian-friendly items,” says the menu at Momofuku Ssäm Bar), and the best of them, including Chang, have a knack for creating big, addictive flavor combinations that get under your skin. Like Batali, Chang—a Korean-American, raised in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.—mines his own ethnic background for inspiration. The past couple of years, he has been demonstrating his talents on a more modest scale at his madly popular original restaurant. But the newest Momofuku (the word means “lucky peach” in Japanese) is larger and more ambitious than the original, and after a period of bumbling experimentation (at first Chang insisted on selling only a form of Asian burrito called a ssäm), it has grown into a showplace for the chef’s unique brand of earthy, Asian-accented Meathead cuisine.
Ssäm Bar's BarDespite the presence of Don Lee, the bar is not a cocktail lounge: it’s a curated selection of 40 brown spirits, ranging from $9 to $50 a pop, and served neat, on the rocks, in a Manhattan, or in an old-fashioned. The focus is on the food, not the booze; the only way you’re getting a drink is if you’re there to eat.
Ideal MealFried Brussels sprouts, three-terrine sandwich, spicy tripe, warm veal-head terrine, Momofuku Ssäm
Adam Platt picks 2009’s top dining destinations,
including Dovetail, Momofuku Ko, and Corton.
The best that the city’s restaurants have to offer:
paella, coffee, grilled cheese, ramen, and more.
We live in a city full of small cheap-eats miracles,
including $1 foods, Korean fried chicken, and burgers.