뉴욕의 새 식당

[이건일]

오늘 아침 NY Times 'Dining Out' section 에 실린 기사를 소개합니다. 식당 이름이 'Momofuku Ko' 이고 'Momofuku Noodle Bar' 'Momofuku Ssam Bar' 라는 이름의 식당을 이미 경영 하고 있는 한국인 교포 David Chang 이 New York East Village 에 새로 열은 식당 입니다. 이름인 모모후꾸는 다음에 올린 대로 '복(福) 숭아'를 의미 하는 일본 어이고 'SSAM'은 한국말 '쌈' 인데 상추잎으로 싼 한국식 쌈 으로 미국사람들에게 인기 있는 taco 나 burrito[ Mexican style 쌈; tortilla (옥수수 가루로 만든 전병) 로 다진 고기나 야채, 삶은 콩등을 싸서 만든 일종의 쌈]보다 훨씬 건강 식 이라고 뉴욕에서 굉장한 인기를 끌고 있습니다. 이 식당들이 굉장한 인기를 얻고 성공하자 그 옆에 새로 문을 연 것이 이 식당입니다. 이 기사를 다 번역 할수는 없어서 그중 일부만 번역 해 보았습니다.

혹시 뉴욕에 가실 기회가 있고 컴퓨터 잘 하는 아들, 딸, 조카, 조카딸들이 있으시면 예약 하시고 한 번 가서 음식을 자셔 보십시오. '모모후꾸 누들 바' 나 '모모후꾸 쌈 바''는 아마 테이블 얻기가 좀 수월 할는 지도 모르 겠습니다.

뉴욕타임스 식당 평에서 별 세개 얻으면 그건 굉장한 일입니다.

홈 페이지 주소와 식당 소개를 올렸습니다.

http://momofuku.com/

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q: what does momofuku mean?
a: lucky peach

q: what kind of cuisine is it?
a: we try and serve delicious american food.

"ethnic crossovers also occur when distinct elements meet in a single recipe.
This country is, after all, a huge melting pot. why should its cooking not illustrate
the american transformation of diversity into unity?" - wolfgang puck.

q: how often does the menu change?
a: daily.

q: where do your ingredients come from?
a: we use local farms with sustainable practices for as much as possible.

q: are there menu items for vegetarians (or those with other special diets)?
a: all vegetarian items are listed as such on the menu, however, we have few.
Please alert your server as to any allergies or special dietary needs you may have.

 

RESTAURANT REVIEW | MOMOFUKU KO

  (Excellent)

To Dine at Momofuku Ko, First You Need Nimble Fingers

 

By FRANK BRUNI

Published: May 7, 2008

 

:

Rebecca McAlpin for The New York Times

At Momofuku Ko, short ribs and pickled mustard seeds.

Related : Times Topics: David Chang (Chef)

Rebecca McAlpin for The New York Times

Peter Serpico and the other cooks at Momofuku Ko also serve the diners.

WHAT you’re about to read may prod you to try for a reservation at Momofuku Ko, so it’s incumbent on me to say this right off the bat :

Best of luck. Be strong. Be forewarned.

You can’t fixate on a specific night. You can’t fixate on a specific hour. You must have patience, an efficient computer and nimble, fast-moving fingers, because the way to grab one of the 12 coveted seats is to click-submit a reservation request at precisely 10 a.m. precisely six days before you aspire to dine there and then hope against hope and dream against dream and promise the cyberspace gods your firstborn male child if they speed your electronic wish to Ko before all the other electronic wishes get there.

(이제 부터 여러분이 읽을 기사 때문에 '모모후꾸 코' 에 예약을 하려고 할지 모르니 이것 만은 이야기 해야 하겠습니다. 운이 좋아야 되고, 끈기가 있어야 되고, 미리 준비 하여야 됩니다. 

어는 특정한 날 저녁 에만 국한 해서는 않됩니다. 어는 특정 시간에 얽 매어도 않됩니다. 인내심을 가지고, 좋은 콤퓨터와 빨리 움직일수 있는 재능 있는 손가락 을 가지고 있어야 됩니다. 왜냐 하면, 만인이 원하는 12개의 식탁 의자들중 하나를 차지 하려면 당신이 저녁을 먹고 싶은 날보다 정확히 6일전, 오전 10시 정각에 예약 약속 키를 클릭 하고, 간절히 희망 하고, 간절히 소망 하고, 다른 모든 전자 소망 들이 그 식당에 도달 하기 전에, 당신의 전자 소망을 더 빨리 전달 할수 있다면 당신의 장자(長子) 라도 cyber space 신들에게 약속 할수 있어야 됩니다.)

Drat! The gods must be lazy. It’s 10:00:09 and the computer is saying that every reservation has just been taken. Try again tomorrow, and the day after that. Promise the gods your chocolate Lab as well.

Ko doesn’t come easy, and that’s a big part of why it is, and will no doubt remain, the most talked-about new restaurant this year.

But it’s noteworthy beyond its addling all-computer reservation system and the intense, revelatory pleasures of its partly Asian, partly French, wholly inventive food.

Under the direction of the young chef David Chang, who has been celebrated to the point of deification, Ko boldly investigates how much — or rather how little — ceremony should attend the serious worship of serious cooking.

Although dinner at Ko is a two-hour, eight-course, full-throttle commitment, it’s also an experiment in subtraction, in calculating which niceties can go without the enjoyment ebbing as well.

Proper tables and place settings? At Ko you belly up to a plain counter that wraps around a plain galley kitchen, and your chopsticks rest on a wine cork.

Lumbar support? At Ko you straddle a backless stool. Lovely scenery? There’s a plywood wall to your back and, in front of you, cooks so close you can count their beads of sweat as they not only prepare and plate your food but also hand it to you. You can feel the heat from the stoves like a sunburn on your brow.

There’s no hard liquor, no tea, no regular coffee and above all no choice. You eat dishes of Ko’s choosing in the order it chooses, and most everybody around you is having roughly the same meal.

The omakase experience at sushi bars is one point of reference; another is the feng shui of the French chef Joël Robuchon’s counter-centric L’Atelier restaurants. But Ko makes the interface between you and the cooks even more casual, more blithe: you sit like an Abdul in judgment of their ability to carry the Led Zeppelin tune blaring from the speakers, because try to carry it they will.

Ko pares down stuffy atmospherics in a particularly thorough way. It wagers that for a younger generation more focused on food than on frippery, a scruffy setting, small discomforts and little tyrannies are acceptable — preferable, even — if they’re reflected in the price.

They are. For $85 you get a number and caliber of dishes — including a wacky and wonderful blizzard of cold foie gras flakes and a cheeky panna cotta whose sweet, milky flavor mimics the sublime dregs of a bowl of cereal — that might cost $150 in a more formal environment.

You don’t get start-to-finish enchantment, but that’s not a function of insufficient coddling. It’s a function of where you set the bar for a restaurant that must master only a cluster of dishes on a given night, and that compels you to surrender so fully to its authority.

Under those terms there’s a promise of unwavering transcendence, and Ko in its early months serves a few dishes that merely intrigue along with others that utterly enrapture. It also falls prey to some inconsistency.

Twice I was blown away by the first savory course, which follows an amuse-bouche of an English muffin soaked with whipped pork fat. It showcases uncooked fluke in a wash of buttermilk, yuzu and Sriracha that struck a thrilling balance of round and sharp notes, silky and spiky effects, coolness and heat. On top of this mix were enough toasted poppy seeds to give it a pleasant grittiness and a pointillist skin.

But the next time I had this dish, with scallop filling in for fluke, the Sriracha was a tamer presence, and the sauce was slightly watery.

One of the final savory courses, slices of short rib that are cooked sous vide for 48 hours before being deep-fried, was a miracle of tender-crisp contrast one night and a letdown of leathery-crisp redundancy on another.

Deification may have come prematurely to Mr. Chang. But a low-key coronation makes sense.

With Momofuku Noodle Bar and Momofuku Ssam Bar, both near Ko in the East Village, he has demonstrated a shrewd grasp of the culinary zeitgeist, bringing considerable skill and high standards to noodle soups, slider-size sandwiches, Asian burritos and chicken wings. He’s playful, never pompous, and despite the offal and other adventurous streaks on the menus at Noodle and Ssam, they resemble glossy snack bars, raucous and rollicking into the wee hours.

The last seating at Ko, which means “child of” in Japanese, is 9:30 p.m. This even-tempered child gives Mr. Chang and his cohorts, including Peter Serpico, a business partner who acts as the restaurant’s chef de cuisine, a smaller, more orderly sanctum in which to labor over a succinct lineup of dishes more classically artistic than the archetypal Momofuku pork bun, not to be found here.

코(Ko)-이 의미는 일본말로 '어린애 같은' 이라는 뜻 이지요- 식당 의 마지막 테이블은 오후 9시30분 입니다. 이 식당은 장씨와 그의 식당 동업자이자 요리담당 셰프인 피터 서피코 등을 포함한 동지들에게, 이 곳 에서는 팔지 않는 전형적인 모모후꾸 돼지고기 끼운 번 (Bun- 둥그렇고 부드러운 빵 으로 그 사이에 고기를 끼어 샌드 위치 처럼 먹는다.) 보다 훨씬 고전 적으로 예술적으로 더 세련된 요리들을 전적으로 준비 할수 있게 하는, 작지만 잘 정리된 안식처를 마련 해 주었 습니다.

 It continues his exploration of his Korean heritage, adoration of pork belly and penchant for pickling. Pickled carrots and pickled mustard seeds surround the short rib, offsetting its heaviness with tart, acidic elements.

이 곳은 그 (데이빗 장)가 한국인 으로서의 물려 받은 유산, 즉 돼지 삼겹 살 을 사랑 하는 것과  짱아찌 종류에 대한 그리움 등을 더 실험 할수 있게 하였습니다. 절인 홍당무, 절인 겨자씨 등이  탁 쏘는 신 맛으로 돼지 갈비의 무거운 맛을 상쇄 시킵니다.  

He’s also a fiend for smokiness, achieved with abandon and efficiency through the addition of a bacon purée — liquid pork belly! — to the dressing of a dish centered around scallop or trout, depending on the night.

그는 또 한 그슬린 맛의 귀신 입니다. 날에 따라 다르 지만은 가리비 (Scallop) 나 송어 요리에 베이콘 퓨레 (고기나 야채를 삶아서 거른 진한 숲)-액체 삼겹살!- 를 끼얹으 므로서 아무 렇지도 않은 듯하면서도 아주 효과 있게 이 것을 이루고 있습니다.

The soft-boiled egg that he serves with hackleback caviar is dipped in smoked water, but that’s not the fun part. Next to it are cooked onions and tiny slivers of deep-fried fingerling potato. It’s a chip-and-dip of a more delicate order.

Lately he has replaced this dish with a less successful eggy meditation: a version of chawan mushi, the Japanese custard, with caviar, asparagus, argan oil and cashews, which don’t register forcefully or give the dish much textural contrast.

There’s lasagna, but it’s a dissident lasagna, the noodles entwined with snails, porcini, spring asparagus, a ricotta foam of sorts and — the genius touch — a Lilliputian bouquet of dehydrated broccoli rabe flowers. They’re crunchy, a smart hedge against any lasagna soupiness. And they’re adorable, like miniaturized marigolds.

There’s a Georgia pea soup with such resonant pea flavor that you wonder about the bastard pedigree of all prior peas in your life and almost fail to notice the morels and the delicate crawfish in the soup. I said almost. Crustaceans rarely get past me.

And then there’s that arresting foie gras, a torchon of which is frozen so it can be shaved into a loosely packed snowball. This preserves the liver’s creaminess while tempering its unctuousness, and it’s rounded out with a brittle of cashews or pine nuts, a gelée of riesling or Sauternes, and litchi or pickled grapes. Ko rearranges the pieces from night to night.

Its sense of mischief is underscored by the “wine pairing” for a course of soft-shell crab: a glass of chilly Budweiser, bringing to mind a day at the beach.

Mischievous, too, is the pastry chef Christina Tosi’s apple pie. It’s sculptured into individual-size rectangles and deep-fried, as if it came straight from McDonald’s, only McDonald’s wouldn’t accessorize it with sour cream ice cream and a swish of sweet, salty toasted miso.

You’ll love it, provided you ever get access to it. The unpredictability of accomplishing that — I entered into groveling, Ko-dependent arrangements with tireless friends and readers — has soured some would-be patrons, but Ko can’t be faulted for generating a demand in excess of the supply. And Mr. Chang to his credit doesn’t seem to be holding any seats in reserve for V.I.P.’s.

Judging from the diners around me whenever I visited, the 10 a.m. reservations lottery favors people under 40, who are perhaps wiser in the ways of technology and more zealous and dexterous in their clicking. That’s probably as it should be: Ko looks to the future, ignoring the old rules and beckoning epicures open to new ones.

Momofuku Ko

***

163 First Avenue, (10th Street), East Village; momofuku.com.

ATMOSPHERE A sliver of unadorned, barely marked space with an L-shaped counter around an open kitchen.

SOUND LEVEL Moderately loud, because of the music: Led Zeppelin, the Violent Femmes.

RECOMMENDED DISHES The menu offers no choices.

WINE LIST Broad-ranging in region and price, with sake selections as well. Half-glass “tastes” of any wine used for pairings are available.

PRICE RANGE Eight courses, $85. Different levels of wine pairings for $50, $80 or $150.

HOURS From 6 to 9:30 p.m. every day but Tuesday.

RESERVATIONS Only through momofuku.com, and made available exactly six days in advance at 10 a.m. Check back for cancellations.

CREDIT CARDS All major cards.

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS The entrance area can accommodate a chair, but the restaurant is officially inaccessible.

WHAT THE STARS MEAN Ratings range from zero to four stars and reflect the reviewer’s reaction to food, ambience and service, with price taken into consideration. Menu listings and prices are subject to change.