Tuesday, January 10, 2012

I WANT TO GO TO THERE:  As part of his rundown of the duck-centric menus at NYC's Momofuku Ssäm Bar and Wong, new NYT restaurant critic Pete ("Dexter's Dad") Wells describes a Wong soup thusly:
It looks like the kind of wan consommé you’d feed an invalid who was too weak to come to the table. But this little cup swings like a heavyweight. It’s profoundly rich and concentrated, and floating on top of the broth is at least a quarter-inch of hot duck fat.

Repeat: a quarter-inch of hot duck fat.

The fat coats your lips and your tongue, and then as you drink the broth it all mixes together into a cup of soup richer than any I’ve ever encountered. In fact, it is nearly as rich as hot chocolate. Not hot cocoa, which is for amateurs, but hot chocolate of the kind served in France, luxurious in heavy cream and cocoa butter. What we have here is a savory duck hot chocolate.

2 comments:

  1. Joseph Finn1:45 AM

    I honestly have no idea, from this review, whether in the reviewers perspective this is supposed to be a good or a bad thing.

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  2. Phil]9:41 AM

    So would you also be nonplussed if I said that their pork belly was like eating a savory bacon flan?  Our table of six "shared" four of them.  We started with one then agreed that the prudent thing to do was to order three more.

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