Momofuku Ssäm Bar
I wanted some peach on this trip to New York, and for our first Chang experience, I chose the Ssäm Bar, originally intended as a Korean burrito joint. No burritos, however.
The entrance is not grand; I imagine on a warm summer night they open the garage door opposite the one you pull open on the right.
The menu is an eclectic mix of a lot of small plates with some other larger entrées. Most folks sit at a bar; you can also sit at tables with a larger party. We walked in and just got a seat; it soon became crowded with a few folks needing to wait before being seated.
If readers remember my trip to Montréal, I had the best oysters at Joe’s Beef, and these weren’t bad either at Momofuku.
Sweet apple teased the senses, a new take on a mignonette sauce.
Fruit came to the scene again in my favorite dish, featuring pear with uni (fresh sea urchin).
Foie gras of the sea, I say.
Since I hail from Virginia these days, we also ordered some Edward’s ham. It was really salty (like I didn’t know), and I wished they had a “Surryano” style ham instead of this salty version. You can see it in the background in this close-up of the famous pork buns.
Those buns were good; the sauce sweet, the texture of the “bread” sublime.
In theory I should have liked this next dish, but I have to say it was not a good by itself. Shared with a bigger group, I’d want a taste. Having to eat a lot of it myself, was well, painful.
That’s apple kimchi. I like cabbage kimchi. At first I didn’t mind this, but wow, the spice! The addition of bacon was one part I liked. Bacon, apple, spice. I get the combination. But… in small doses.
Our last dish was spicy sausage with rice balls and some oniony stuff on top (I sadly don’t recall what it was, precisely). This dish made the kimchi taste light on spice. When they say the stuff is spicy, they are not kidding you.
Hot red thai chilies were in the sauce; the sausage, mostly at the bottom, was good; but the main component of spice were those chills, the sauce rich in spicy oil. The rice balls were nice texturally, but they soaked up the spice. I can still “feel” the spice of this dish just thinking about it. Good, but best consumed in small doses via sharing.
I enjoyed the experience. This was not fine dining; it was bar seated dining, which I enjoyed. You don’t get to see the cooking behind the bar (boo!), but they do have a glass wall into the kitchen at the opposite end. They use wood paneling in the dining room which I liked, taken from what I imagine was engineered for the floor and stuck it on the wall.
A great place to go with friends and explore some exotic flavor combinations!