THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER18, 2021 11
PHOTOGRAPH BY COURTNEY SOFIAH YATES FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
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TABLESFORTWO
Momofuku Ssäm Bar
89 South St., Pier 17
At this juncture in the evolution of
Momofuku, a brand so expansive and
brimming with personality—a good
amount of which belongs to its icon-
oclastic founder, David Chang—that
it spans four cities, ten locations, and
a multi-platform media company, you
might wonder if it’s due for a midlife
crisis. If a ruby-red Beamer screams panic
for a certain breed of middle-aged men,
do soulless corporate digs for a guerrilla
outfit turned establishment darling signal
anxiety about identity for an iconic culi-
nary empire? The question is posed by the
latest incarnation of Ssäm Bar, Chang’s
maverick sophomore effort, which once
defined the East Village food scene and
now resides in a glass-walled, L.E.D.-lit
behemoth in the South Street Seaport.
This isn’t the first time a Momo-
fuku restaurant has found itself inside a
mall—the uptown Noodle Bar is in the
Shops at Columbus Circle—but there is
something incongruous about scanning
a menu featuring eighty-eight-dollar
Wagyu rib eye while watching dazed
tourists glide up and down an industrial
escalator. But change is not all bad. In the
age of COVID, the mall’s high-ceilinged
airiness and the occasional breeze wafting
through its open patio, which overlooks
the East River, are, if anything, welcome.
Chang built his reputation on his
virtuosity with pork, so when Spicy Im-
possible Pork Rice Cakes was named as
a special I assumed that “impossible” was
a tongue-in-cheek self-appraisal of the
dish’s delectability. As it turns out, the
dish, my favorite on the menu, embodies
my favorite Changian trait: imaginative
versatility. The original Momofuku clas-
sic Spicy Pork Rice Cakes was, as Frank
Bruni put it in his 2007 Times review,
“gnocchi with a Korean passport,” swap-
ping potato dumplings for rice cakes and
ragù for Sichuan-peppercorn-laden meat
sauce. The 2021 iteration is yet another
reinvention, using plant-based Impos-
sible Pork and whipped tofu to deliver
a rare gastronomic gift that tastes more
indulgent than it is.
Other standouts are similarly shrewd
couplings of past and present. The Heir-
loom Tomato Salad might sound forget-
table, but, thanks to the interplay of some
Momofuku mainstays—shiso leaf, emul-
sified garlic, yuzu kosho—it’s a bright,
complex tangle that packs full-throttle
heat. Of the three items in the raw bar,
the right choice is the sea scallops, which
are coated in an umami bomb of a sauce
made from scraps of American country
ham flavored with XO seasoning.
Ssäm means “wrapped” in Korean,
and, more than a decade ago, in the East
Village, it was the bo ssäm—an epic hunk
of slow-roasted pork with a glorious car-
amelized crust, to be wrapped in lettuce
with oysters, rice, and sauces—that cat-
apulted the restaurant to its legendary
status. By comparison, the crispy-fish
dish, which resembles a hornet’s nest
that’s been battered and fried, is effortful
and ungainly.
The most disappointing item on the
menu also happens to be the summer’s
No. 1 seller: Chili Jam Popcorn Shrimp.
Crisp-edged and peanut-encrusted, the
appetizer is unobjectionable if generic,
a word that would likely be anathema
to Chang, seemingly a violation of the
Momofuku spirit. If its accessibility is a
concession to the tourist-dense nature
of Ssäm Bar’s new home, it’s also an in-
dication of another kind of adaptabil-
ity: Momofuku may be defined by its
innovations, but its longevity depends,
too, on a capitalist-minded democracy.
As Momofuku’s C.E.O., Marguerite
Mariscal, told me, “At the end of the day,
it’s always the customers who decide.”
There are more changes ahead. A
second floor will open soon, to accom-
modate additional indoor seating, and
the tables will be furnished with coun-
tertop grills. A bigger, and hopefully
more inspired, array of bo-ssäm dishes
is rumored to be in the works. If Ssäm
Bar, and Momofuku itself, has an identity,
it’s likely an enduring attraction to the
churn of evolution. It has survived multi-
ple cycles of birth and rebirth, with more
to come. In Changland, that’s mostly a
good thing. (Dishes $32-$84.)
—Jiayang Fan
