Petit Pear

So … I think I have a crush on Sam Sifton. Or maybe Marea, the restaurant he recently handed three stars to in the New York Times. Maybe this will explain it. Here he describes ricci:

a piece of warm toast slathered with sea urchin roe, blanketed in a thin sheet of lardo, and dotted with sea salt. It offers exactly the sensation as kissing an extremely attractive person for the first time — a bolt of surprise and pleasure combined.

Uh, wow.

That said, I didn’t go to Marea when I went to New York this weekend, and didn’t intend to from the moment I got there. It was my first time in the city and, as Sifton notes in his gorgeous-cusping-on-overwritten review of the splashy Italian seafood spot, Marea is more a place for proud, post-recession exclamatories. I’m not one of them.

Good thing then, that you don’t need a lot of money to eat well in this city. Really, really well.

You know how in Toronto the first two responses to the question Where can I get a really nice meal, for not too much? are either the Black Hoof or Pizzeria Libretto?

I get the feeling that David Chang’s Momofuku tree of restaurants are treated the same way by New Yorkers: a fail-safe recommendation to out-of-towners. They’re slick, constantly packed and most important, don’t take their image more seriously than their food.

And as such: yes, the food is really good.

And, as it happens, perfect for any occasion: dining among us at Momofuku Ssam were a troupe of Halloweeners dressed as the cast from RuPaul’s Drag Race, a couple of expensive suits with their well-coiffed dates and a man in bicycle shorts.

Though you won’t want to, Ssam is a place to share. The starters, from individual steamed pork buns to pulled pork sandwiches, were dutifully divided by the couples on dates — with ties clipped to their shirts lest they get some spicy pig on their $300 Hugo Bosses. Either way, try the buns: the pork belly is mighty fatty, and a sweet surprise against the crunch of cucumbers.

And that pile of speckled fruit you see there, with the cream? Apple kimchi and maple-spiked labneh.

Can’t say if what Chang’s doing here is actual labneh: it’s got the consistency a creme fraiche and has the same effect when you pair it with the apples (like how one does with an apple pie), but it’s freaking delicious anyway. Try it. And start with that smoked pork jowl on the plate: the whole thing will be that much sweeter.

And, as if we hadn’t gotten enough pork already: spicy pork sausage on rice cakes and broccoli. Crunchy, salty, oily, hugely filling, don’t eat this if you’ve just come here for drinks.

But who does that here anyway? This animal is worshipped at Ssam! I doubt business ever skipped a beat for them in those first few months of swine flu confusion — not that the situation is a whole lot clearer now.

PS. Jennifer Bain, food editor at the Star, got to talk to David Chang recently about his newly-released cookbook. You’ll find it here, along with a recipe for those pork buns and   what this one-time GQ Man of the Year has to say about Montreal.