The Next Momofuku

Ok, not really, but it does seem like Asian small plates with a Korean bent are all the rage. Danji, a minimalist space with 30 something seats in midtown west, fits in just fine. Aside from the wait, which wasn't nearly as long as that over at RedFarm, service was pleasant enough. I started with a beverage of watermelon-infused tequila and a background heat I couldn't identify. On one side of their menu, Danji offers traditional Korean fare; flip the sheet and arrive at a group of selections entitled "modern." Both sides do the country justice.

A riff on steak tartare, complete with a jardinere of daikon radish and perfect cubes of fatty meat, comes with the requisite quail egg yolk. It doesn't disappoint. Neither does a salad of chewy whelks, arugula, and red onion, paired with a tangle of buckwheat noodles, all cold. A trio of kimchis--Napa cabbage, daikon, cucumber--though tasty, left me wanting more. No, really. It just wasn't enough food.

That was the theme as a whole, actually. Bulgogi sliders, so rich they actually dripped fat, came in a tiny duo. I could have crushed five more. Crispy, spicy chicken wings came five to a plate. But bacon paella (a bit of a misfire, actually) with a fried hen egg was enough for two people and then some. Too much fat in the skillet prevented the rice from assuming the caramelization endemic to a good paella.

Still, the food is worth the hunger pains. And anyway, you can always order more.

*

Danji

346 West 52nd Street

New York, NY 10019

212.586.2880

Playing With My Friends

Another stress fracture has me grounded, which means less time with my running sneakers and more time doing... something else. I have to remember to exercise restraint with food during the next two months, or I'll be forced to wear nothing but leggings while my skinny jeans writhe in protest. Yesterday wasn't a good start to period of said restraint.

I was invited to see my favorite married couple for bloody marys and burgers. In addition to burgers--ground beef, short rib, and chorizo--we ate pizza pomodoro from the Jim Lahey bread book and cookies from City Bakery and these weird cheesy balls that came from a packaged Brazilian bread mix. That, paired with the leftover cookie dough I ate for breakfast (give me a break--it was whole-wheat dough) would have probably racked up enough calories for the day, but I was hungry, hungry, hungry by the time I made it to Mad for Chicken in Koreatown at ten o'clock.

Mad for Chicken is like the worst nightclub you've ever been to that also happens to sell the best fried chicken. You have to wait for an hour for your table. The bartenders are beyond incompetent. The drinks--a lychee mojito for me--are doused in sugar and bad rum. The clientele is "Asian club kid." If you aren't familiar with that clientele, no need to be.

But then, you sit at one of the Mad for Chicken tables and they bring you insanely spicy crunchy kimchi chicken wings with pickled daikon and celery sticks and this weird cheese and rice-cake casserole that kind of tastes like Spaghetti O's and larger plates of non-spicy-but-equally-crunchy drumsticks and Mexican corn rolled in mayonnaise and queso and chili powder and pretty much everything is okay with the world. In our case, they also brought these ridiculous glass kegs of beer that were topped with dry ice, creating the illusion that the beer was smoking. Each keg was five liters. Our group drank three of them. I won't get into the mathematical possibilities of that, but suffice to say that our bill came to a whopping thirty bucks a person, including tip, so if you want to eat really good fried chicken and drink until you think that playing dominoes is normal and socially acceptable dinner behavior (as two of my co-eaters did), head to K-town asap.

*

Mad for Chicken

314 5th Avenue, 2nd floor

New York, NY 10001

212.221.2222

I Didn't Watch The Superbowl

I went out for Korean barbecue instead.

1. I am vehemently opposed to the Tebow ad that was scheduled to run and that was funded by Focus on the Family, a group I detest.

2. I was even more upset by the fact that Planned Parenthood and MoveOn.org were denied advertising spots on CBS.

3. I wanted New Orleans to win, but the again, I didn't really care all that much.

We went to Madangsui, on 35th Street. First: jap chae, or slimy rice noodles, cooked with beef and onions and probably a lot of MSG, not that I cared. With that, steamed pork dumplings that were, to be honest, a little dry and tasteless. As for the actual barbecue part, well, I know I've been really anti-beef lately, and I continue to remain true to my values, but this was some of the tastiest meat I have ever had. saeng galbi and bulogi, both marinated. One is essentially shaved beef marinated with a bunch of delicious stuff, and the other is fatty pieces of short rib, also marinated, and cut off the bone by a deft waitress yielding giant scissors. On the grill, too: large circles of white onion and halved button mushrooms.

Part of the genius of Korean barbecue is all the stuff that comes with it: kimchi soup (good), chawan mushi or something to that effect (I had no room for this), sweet pickled vegetables (addictive), two types of kimchi--daikon and cabbage (yum), nori (fine), really spicy radish and peppers (they weren't kidding when they warned us), a salad of shaved onion and celery (perfect for crunch with the beef), and lettuce for wrapping. If I omitted any delicious snacks, I apologize. Wrap whatever you feel like combining with meat and lettuce and you have teeny little ssams. My friend used rice in hers, but I preferred the unadulterated taste of the meat. I'd like to go back with more people and eat more of the menu; as it stood, two beef selections, a noodle dish, and dumplings were the outer limit of what we could eat--and I had run fifteen miles that afternoon.

Well, anyway. I'll be back.

*

Madangsui

35 West 35th Street

New York, NY 10001

212.564.9333

Breakfast Of Champions

I had some tasty things at Roberta's last night, most notably a spicy ramp pizza featuring charred ramps.  (In their cheeky way, they called the pizza the Stephen Hawking, a tart joke I didn't exactly find funny.)  Afterwards, I stopped at a deserted Italian ice store in Maspeth--fyi, driving to Bushwick is easier than taking the train--and had myself a rainbow ice like the kind my dad used to buy me at the Park Slope pizza joints when I was six or seven.  But enough about that. 

When I woke up and tried to convince my boyfriend to take me out to brunch, he countered with a request for breakfast in bed.  Um, no.  I do NOT like the idea of food anywhere near my clean sheets.  But I did agree to raid the fridge and make breakfast/brunch for us both. 

I had three eggs.  I whisked them together with a little half and half (no milk in the house), some sea salt and cracked black pepper.  In a small frying pan, I heated some chopped prawns, asparagus, and red chili oil leftover from Chinese takeout night (Tuesday).  I added the eggs and, voila.  Spicy shrimp scrambled eggs.  

Next up, pork belly fried rice.  I chopped the leftover sliced pork belly and also used the chili oil from that dish to start the sautee.  Then I added a carton of brown rice and cooked it until the rice began to adhere to the bottom of the pan.  In Spanish cooking, the burnt brown ends are considered the prize of the paella.  

Finally, I threw halved whole-wheat English muffins under the broiler until they were just short of black.  These I served with kimchi butter that I bought at Momofuku Milk Bar last Sunday.  The kimchi butter was spicy.  It also had rendered bacon in it (I kind of feel like they should have told me this before, but whatever).  My companion claimed it tasted like a Slim Jim.  I'm not sure if I disagree, but it doesn't really matter; it was still good.  

Asian leftovers may be the best equipment for a spontaneous meal, assuming you can handle the spice in the morning.  As for me, I have an iron stomach.  

K-Town

A while back, I stumbled upon a review in the New York Times for BCD Tofu, a Los Angeles import that had made it to the Koreatown strip last year. The review suggested that BCD's most remarkable dish, a pickled raw crab preparation, was only available on the lunch menu. Ask away, the article said. Sometimes, generous waiters served smaller portions at dinner.

So, last night, at one in the morning when I rolled into BCD with a tired and hungry posse, we ate through napa cabbage kimchi, pickled cucumbers, pickled daikon, fried fish heads, kimchi soup with cucumber, marinated squid, and seaweed salad, all complimentary (if you've ever gone to a proper Korean restaurant, you know that the free stuff often exceeds what's been ordered). My friends ordered fried pork dumplings, mushrooms stuffed with some kind of fried meat, and a cold Korean noodle dish that the waiter told us only Koreans liked. He was wrong. It was studded with pickled bamboo and a hard boiled egg and it was sort of sublime.

And then I asked for the crab.

The waiter looked at me like I was crazy. He was much less shocked when I ordered the traditional bibimbap, ground beef served in a hot pot with assorted pickled vegetables (of course), rice, and a raw egg yolk. But I begged and pleaded and then the crab arrived. It was hard-shelled and completely impossible to eat, bathed in a red chili sauce that stained my fingers and burned my tongue. To get to the meat, I had to crack through shell with my teeth and scrape the raw crab from the interior. It had the consistency of any raw fish, firm and toothsome. It was sweet by nature and spicy from the sauce and it was totally weird and fantastic. I'm not sure anyone else was as into it as I was and I prayed a little that it wouldn't promote some kind of allergic reaction or mild food poisoning on the eve of another long run. But my digestive tract proved strong and stable and I walked from BCD with the knowledge that raw crab is delicious.

And did I mention the hours of operation? That's 24 fun-filled hours of Korean madness. Night owls, enjoy!

*
BCD Tofu
17 W. 32nd Street
New York, NY 10001
212.967.1900