Description: Modern Rickshaw Canteen
Burdie Approved Rating:
Pros: good for small parties, lots to choose fr. the menu
Cons: long wait
I can eat the Pork buns at Momofuku Ssäm Bar all day long. When I was a kid, my mother used to bring home a white box full of "choh-pow" (char siu bao) from chinatown. White fluffy buns filled with sweet pork, sometimes rumored to be cat!
The pork buns at Ssam are the best ones I've ever had - juicy slabs of tender pork belly topped with thin medallions of cucumber. It's more like a sandwich than the typical pork buns you find in Chinese bakeries. The $9 price is a bit steep if you're used to paying .50 - $1, but the ingredients are quality --- there's no chance of finding any whiskers in these suckers. Before leaving, I placed a take out order for Hillsy - I knew that he'd love them as much as I did! (he did).
Fabienne and I ordered 2 other dishes: hanger steak - was just ok (I would try other menu items before re-ordering this one again) and the rice cakes with sausage (it was more like a ragu with Penne-shaped rice pasta). The rices cakes were a bit on the heavy and chewy side, I would imagine some people could be put off by the consistency of the "cakes". Think thick gnocchi-like texture but with a flavor like rice-crackers or rice-milk.
They only had 1 dessert available - mochi sampler (the best I've had in the city). The flavors were awesome: pistachio, blueberry cheesecake, chocolate/strawberry and Lychee.Unfortunately the place does not serve hot beverages, it would have been nice to sip some tea before heading out into the icy rain and freezing temperatures. Service was great, food was good, price was a bit higher than I expected (ended up paying $81 including tip for 2 orders of the pork bun, rice cake with sausage, hanger steak wrap, mochi dessert and 1 bottle of Fuji water) - well, now that I listed it all out; I guess it wasnt that bad.
