berkshire badassedness.

You know how sometimes when a place/work of entertainment/product/etc. is so hyped up, so universally lavished with praise and drooled over by so many critics and acquaintances alike that your expectations build up to something impossibly high, only to end inevitably in disappointment? Momofuku Noodle Bar is not a place like that. No matter how high your expectations or skepticism, Momofuku will meet them with a proud, noodly grin.

This one is closer than Chao Zhou, and is located right in the heart of the East Village, on 1st Avenue between 10th and 11th Streets. Here’s a Google Map. At any given moment you will find wild packs of hungry hipsters descending upon it like so many wolves, if wolves wore tight jeans and vintage flannel shirts. But trust me, regardless of your view of the East Village, this is your kind of place.

I’ve written about this place before, but it’s because I’ve been trying to go there for a pretty long time and have always given up after being told there was a wait of an hour or more. This time we showed up early, right at 6pm, and the wait was only 10 minutes or so. We squeezed into the tiny, narrow space with its long bar packed with stools and patrons atop those stools greedily shoveling noodles into their mouths between messy slurps of broth. The open kitchen, impressively clockwork in its efficiency and speed, is bigger than the seating area. I like to think I’m not all that fat, but I had trouble squeezing between those stools and the wall in order to get to the bathroom. But then, you should be so lucky that you got a seat at all, you ingrate.

When we got our seats, all the way at the inner end of the bar, we were treated to swift but friendly and attentive service (they’re one of those places that ask you breathlessly if you’re ready for your check, so that you can make way for the hordes of dedicated and ravenous noodlehunters waiting outside in the cold). I ordered the signature dish, the Momofuku Ramen, with an appetizer of roasted cylindrical rice cakes smothered in sweet spicy chili sauce. The rice cakes were fairly traditional Korean fare, but the noodles were anything but.

If the only thing you know about Ramen is Maruchan or Cup Noodles, then this restaurant will be your New York Mecca. Here the Chinese Lo Mein-style noodles are hand-pulled, soft but with just the right amount of chewiness, and abundant; plopped into a huge white bowl with a broth that’s simmered with who knows how many ingredients for who knows how many hours, and infused with the flavor of smoked bacon. In and around the lake of soupy goodness lie oodles upon oodles of pork — deep pink, impossibly flavorful shredded shoulder meat and melt-in-your-mouth tender, nearly white belly meat with those succulent layers of fat that you usually only find at upscale Chinese banquets. I still don’t know what makes Berkshire pork special compared to other kinds of pork, but it tastes damn good. The pork absolutely makes the dish, and the eclectic, unusual mix of spicy flavors makes me swoon. On top of the noodles and the pork are little bonuses that, in contrast to the richness of the base, are light and fresh — crunchy slivers of bamboo, tiny rings of scallion slices, delicate sheets of salted Korean seaweed, piles of Japanese snowpeas. It all combines to make a perfect soup.

They definitely don’t skimp on the portions, either. I ate until I felt full, then ate some more, then decided that it was too good not to finish, so I ate until I felt sick, then took a deep breath and finished my soup. I felt like I wanted to throw up for about an hour after that, but it was so worth it. Next time I’m going to get the steamed pork buns that everyone’s raving about. They’re a spinoff from these very traditional Chinese steamed buns that are snowy white and pillowy soft to the touch, with savory fatty pork stuffed into them like hot pockets. My Great Grandmother Juliana makes them sometimes, and thinking about them makes me drool.

I smelled like smoked bacon for the rest of the night. When I met my Columbia buddies at a bar uptown later on, I greeted them with an apology: “if I smell like noodles, it’s because…” And they interrupted with “because you’re Chinese, and that’s all you eat?” But that’s because my friends are racist. The point is, if you don’t like smelling like your meal, you should still go to this restaurant, because I don’t care about your $200 cologne; smoked Berkshire pork is a better fragrance.

I could go into the interesting pedigree of this restaurant, like how it’s named with a wink and a smile after Momofuku Ando, the creator of instant ramen noodles, how the logo is a cute little peach because Momofuku also happens to mean “peach” in Japanese, and how the owner/chef is a 30 year-old Korean American chef formerly of Craft (one of those impossibly upscale and chi-chi New York restaurants) who is obsessed with Japanese and Chinese noodle cuisines and pulled more than a little culinary influence from his travels in those countries, but other people say all that stuff better, and I’m sleepy because it’s almost 4 in the morning.

Conclusion: go to this restaurant. But don’t go when I’m there, because I will fight you for that stool. There’s still a girl sitting in it, but she’s indie-kid-skinny like all the other trendy patrons and she looks like she’s slowing down. I will trample over her if it means inheriting her seat.

Oh, and one other caveat: the food here is *salty*. If you don’t like food that is seasoned by pouring uninterrupted rivers of salt into the wok, then, well, you probably don’t appreciate ramen anyway, and my rant is falling upon deaf ears.

Here are some links to external reviews, in case all my gushing sounds a bit too over-the-top to be believed:

• New York Magazine
• The New York Times
• The Washington Post
• Time Magazine
• CNN
• Yelp
• Citysearch

I didn’t talk at all about how I went to the 2007 International Auto Show today, nor give any details about my adventures on the upper east side, but those will be the subject of another post that I will write after getting many hours of restful sleep.

-D