Tag Archives: ssam

Bo Ssam Feast

I recently teamed up with @LetsDutch to organize a large format meal and promote the awesome service that they provide for their users. In case you missed it last time, I’ll explain a little bit about what Let’s Dutch is again.

Have you ever wanted to partake in a group experience but had trouble rallying your friends to join? Well, now you don’t have to miss out on that event. Let’s Dutch allows you to host or join in group events, curate a guest list and securely pay for things ahead of time. It can be used on anything from super luxurious vacations to simple discounted group rate experiences around town.

You’re essentially crowdfunding your fun, sharing the experience and splitting the cost.

The cool part is that you get to know people with similar interests. For example, in the two large format dinners I’ve done through Let’s Dutch, I’ve cultivated at least a half a dozen friendships.

So for this “meating” of the Carcass Club, we had a beast feast with some pork shoulder at Momofuku Ssam Bar. This is known as their large format Bo Ssam feast, which feeds 6-10 people. Let’s Dutch President Vincent Paradiso and I stacked the seats with four or five Instagram influencers, and then held a sweepstakes giveaway for the remaining seats.

Here’s how the meal went down.

We started with the famous pork belly buns. These were fantastic. Super tender, highly flavorful.

Then the Bo Ssam items started coming out. First the lettuce wraps and Korean sauces.

Then the oysters, which are meant to be placed into the lettuce wraps along with the pork and sauces.

And finally, the massive hunk of pork shoulder.

Pictures don’t really do this thing justice. To get the scale of it, you should really see it as it is being pulled apart with tongs.

The meat was tender and delicious, especially the fattier parts that held in a lot of juiciness.

We also had some nice mushroom soup with lotus root. This was absolutely delicious, and might have actually been my favorite part of the meal.

And then some dessert: green tea creme brulee with miso and blueberry crust.

And toffee cake with brown sugar ice cream.

The toffee cake was the big winner as far as desserts go. Great meal, great people, great service. I highly recommend both the large format feasts at Momofuku AND the Let’s Dutch service.

MOMOFUKU SSAM BAR
207 2nd Ave
New York, NY 10003

Momofuku Ssam Bar Brisket & Let’s Dutch

The head honcho over at Let’s Dutch reached out to me to introduce himself and his service. Essentially it’s a place where people can host and organize group activities, and one of the things they facilitate is large format dining. That’s right up my alley, given my creation of Carcass Club, in which I and some friends try to get together to take on the various whole beast feasts that are peppered throughout this fine city.

Naturally, I was interested. The service is great for both city newbies, who are looking to meet new people with similar interests, and old fogies like me and my wife, who are just looking for seats at the feast when it’s becoming increasingly difficult to peg down a date and time among all of our friends that might be interested.

I was especially pumped when Vincent (the aforementioned head honcho) informed me that they’d be doing the new brisket feast for 10 people at Momofuku Ssam Bar. Fuck yeah.

So the meal is pretty simple. You get a massive hunk of delicious, tender, slow cooked brisket, along with lettuce for making wraps, and various sauces and kimchi items for toppings.

I highly recommend this meal to anyone who loves brisket or BBQ, as it is quasi-BBQ in nature. They even created a secret seven-spice blend for this baby. I absolutely loved it.

You may already know that I’ve been to Momofuku for their large format feasts in the past: duck and rib eye. This brisket feast is the best of the three I’ve tried, and I think they’ve also added a fourth, pork shoulder (bo ssam). I’ll have to try that one soon.

MOMOFUKU SSAM BAR
207 2nd Ave.
New York, NY 10003

Momofuku Ko

My wife and I came here as one of my Christmas gifts to her. We had heard lots of amazing shit about this place, so we were excited to go. This meal happened at the new restaurant space on Extra Place. Since it was relatively recent since they made the switch, we had the pleasure of actually seeing and meeting Chef David Chang in the restaurant. Pretty awesome, seeing as I feel he is one of the most important and innovative chefs of a generation. Here’s a shot I took of him and my wife after we finished our meal:

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So anyway, check out the tasting meal we had: easily one of the best meals of my life. My wife’s photos came out amazing, so I included them too (overhead shots).

We were seated at the corner of the U-shaped bar, and felt that our every need was attended to, constantly. The service here is amazing, and it feels as if each diner has a pair of chefs and waiters all to him/herself. The presence of management is always felt as well. They really go above and beyond to make sure you are having a great meal.

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First was a Concord grape soda & jelly shot to prep the taste buds. Fizzy and sweet.

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We were already sipping on some cocktails. Mine was a gin drink (on the left) called “Shrub,” and my wife had a bourbon drink called “Quartet.” Both were excellent. We had a pair of hot damp towels too, to get all that subway stripper pole germ shit off of our hands before eating. The cool thing about this meal is that it’s not pretentious by any means. You eat with your hands for most of the meal.

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The first food items were a lobster & mint cylinder, and a dry aged beef tartlet with carrot. The beef was really flavorful and savory. I wanted more! The lobster and mint combo was surprisingly good, and it was a refreshing bite.

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Next was an amazingly tasty bite of sushi. Striped bass with nori, pickled veggies and daikon.

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Then came a millefeuille of rye phyllo dough layered with trout roe and green tea powder. Absolutely stunning to look at, and even nicer to shove down your throat. Just be careful not to breathe while eating or that green tea powered may have you coughing.

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This red snapper tartare may have been my favorite dish of the night. It came mixed with a jelly made from the fish bones broth/flavor, and dressed with yuzu, lime and shiso spray.

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Another refreshing and light dish was this raw scallop with pineapple dashi, drizzled with basil seed and basil oil soup. Awesome.

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Next was probably my least favorite dish, but it was still nicely executed. Beets with brown butter and bonito (dried anchovies).

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The following is the absolute best preparation of uni (sea urchin) I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating. Prior to this, I wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of uni. I’ve had some great preparations (like at Takashi), but nothing ever really blew me away to the point where I would go out of my way to have it. This was amazing though. It was raw, and served with a fermented chic pea puree and topped with lemon olive oil. So fucking creamy!

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This next dish was fun to watch them prepare. It was torched mackerel with rice, wasabi and dash ponzu sauce, sitting on a wasabi leaf. Sushi, essentially. The cool thing was that they used an infrared torch to get that char on the fish without imparting any fuel flavor from something like a butane torch.

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After some googling at home, I found that Chef Chang has actually endorsed the product, and supported their Kickstarter efforts. The product is called the Searzall. Check it out – it’s fucking cool:

The trout mousse with pickled sunchoke and kale in a dashi broth was warm and comforting. A bowl of this on a cold winter night would hit the spot. They poured the broth in table side. I shot some video of it (six seconds), but it really wasn’t that exciting so I decided to just show the photo.

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Another highlight of the meal was the soft scrambled egg with Siberian caviar and sweet potato flakes. It had great texture from the flakes, great briny salt from the caviar, and the egg was perfect.

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They also served the egg dish with some sourdough bread and watermelon-radish salted butter. The butter was very unique and flavorful. Very fresh and light. The kind of butter you can eat by the vat and not feel guilty about it.

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My next favorite course, and my wife’s first favorite course, was the celery root agniolotti pasta with Tandoori spice and fucking white truffle. This was perfect in every way. It was soft and pillowy, yet it had crunch from the truffle (it was crisp!). It was slightly salty, but I really didn’t mind because the flavors were so robust.

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Next was a slow cooked branzino with yogurt sumac sauce. It was toped with spiced sunflower seeds, which came off slightly bitter, but still nice to eat. Also mixed in was artichoke. This dish had the skin on. Typically I don’t eat fish skin unless it is crispy, but this was awesome. It was soft and tender. It felt like any other part of the fish meat when I popped it into my mouth.

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This next dish was both salty and spicy. It was roasted lobster tail and sweet potato in a lobster sauce with fried ginger. The sauce would have been perfect if it wasn’t so salty. I found that if I didn’t dip too often into the sauce, then I really enjoyed this dish. The lobster meat was cooked perfectly.

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Most interesting dish of the night goes to the Hudson Valley foie gras that seemed to be grated as if it were super soft cheese. It was garnished with pine nuts, Reisling wine jelly and lychee. This, too, was salty, but I enjoyed it very much.

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Here comes the meat, bitches! Venison loin with a sauce made from cranberry and deer blood. It was served with a side of whipped potato that had been combined with with butter and a cheese that was reminiscent of a Stilton or blue cheese. As you can see below, the venison was cooked rare, and if I had to guess, it was sous vide style, and then lightly torched.

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A palate cleanser came next: Clementine sorbet with Campari.

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The dessert was highly anticipated. A guy a few seats down from us when we first arrived had just gotten his bowl, and was flipping out about how great it was. He didn’t want to eat it because he didn’t want it to end. Coconut lime sorbet with banana rum meringue and wafers.

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There was complimentary coffee:

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And a small tray of macarons and chocolates came along with the bill:

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I should also make note of the music at this place. It was excellent, as if the selection were based off of my favorites. There was lots of 80s music, and oldies. They even played our wedding song, which was nice. I felt bad because I was in the middle of chatting with one of the chefs about all the delicious shit in the fridges at the back of the restaurant, otherwise I would  have liked to bust out and dance with my wife beside our seats.

It was so cool though – floor to ceiling fridges make up one whole wall in the back, and you can actually see what you’re eating and how it is stored. Here are some of the awesome things I found in the fridges: truffles, aging tuna, cheese cloth wrapped foie gras, aging venison loin (unless that is some sort of sausage) and a variety of aging beef.

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Whole Rotisserie Duck At Momofuku Ssam Bar

Check this shit out, you salivating scumbags:

Keeping in line with my recent non-steak-related commentary dealing with other delicious foods around NYC, I present to you the whole rotisserie duck at Momofuku:

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This particular dish is available at Momofuku Ssam Bar on 2nd Avenue at 13th Street. For $140 you get the duck (breast stuffed with duck sausage just under the skin and roasted) served atop a bed of jasmine rice; some chive pancakes and Bibb lettuce for wrapping; two seasonal sides (we chose the pickled veggies and kimchi, and the baby bok choy seasonal greens); and crispy shallots, cilantro, mint, Thai basil, watercress, hoisin sauce, Korean BBQ sauce and duck scallion sauce for toppings. They even bring out some duck broth made fresh at the end of the meal.

The duck is locally sourced too, for all your eco-assholes out there that actually give a shit. It’s from Crescent Duck in Aquebogue, Long Island.

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Now on with the pics. Duck off, or go duck yourself:

First, my wife ordered a Bloody Mary. Here. it’s made with rye, sake, tomato, apple, ham, and togarashi. We thought it was a little on the small side for $11, and a little sweet, but it was meaty, spicy and otherwise good. Nice ice cube in there too.

bloody mary
bloody mary

Next we ordered an app of liver mousse. Delicious, light and creamy. Topped with pickled radish and some greens.

liver mousse
liver mousse

Here is one of the side items that came with the duck meal – the pickled veggie jars:

pickled veggies
pickled veggies

And the “seasonal greens” – aka baby bok choy:

baby bok choy
baby bok choy

Then they brought out the pre-sliced duck to show it to us:

pre-sliced duck
pre-sliced duck

Here it is all sliced up and presented nice-nice:

rotisserie duck platter
rotisserie duck platter

Here’s the lettuce and sauce collection:

Bibb + sauces
Bibb + sauces

And finally they bring out a little bowl of duck broth to finish off the meal. Very rich.

duck broth
duck broth

Here are some more pics of the duck. If you look closely you can see the layer where the duck sausage splits from the duck breast. Each little slice was like a two-in-one punch of roasty, crispy, juicy flavor. Fucking awesome.

crispy deliciousness
crispy deliciousness
served on a bed of jasmine rice
served on a bed of jasmine rice
constructing a duck ssam on a scallion pancake
constructing a duck ssam on a scallion pancake

 

And here’s one last shot – the kitchen in full swing:

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kitchen

MOMOFUKU SSAM BAR
207 2nd Ave.
New York, NY 10003