Stuff to eat. Mostly around St. Louis.
Momofuku CCDC
Am I cool now that I’ve been to one of David Chang’s restaurants?
Unlike most of the celebrity chefs who have used their fame to churn out garbage cookbooks, open restaurants made specifically for tourists with no taste, and sell their souls to be on mid-day cooking shows, Chang has done nothing but expand his empire of boundary-pushing restaurants.
He was brought to the limelight by Anthony Bourdain and, in a lot of ways, is the man we first associated with Bourdain: a renegade chef, unafraid of saying whatever comes to his mind. Though, like Bourdain, he has become less of a chef and more of a public figure.
The guy has 19 restaurants globally (and growing by the day), most of which attract top-tier FOH/BOH talent. That’s what you need to know.
I recently had the pleasure of trying out brunch at his D.C. location, Momofuku CCDC. Let’s talk about it.
The restaurant is located in a brand new complex, and par for the course in D.C., it’s sexy. We went in planning to get fucked up on food, and by god, we did it.
Things kicked off with a creamy Maryland crab dip served with spiced chicharrones for dipping, which should be a thing everywhere. You’ve already resigned yourself to eating unhealthy when you get tortilla chips, so why not just go all the way and eat some fried pork skin?
The dip was chased with a handful of steam buns—shiitake with hoisin, scallions, and cucumber to be healthy, shrimp with spicy mayo, pickled red onion, and iceberg lettuce to be moderately healthy, and a bacon & egg bun with hollandaise and bourbon maple syrup because living a long life is overrated.
The logical next step in our descent into obesity was shrimp and grits. An oversized bowl filled with buttery, creamy grits, topped with spicy shrimp, mustard greens, and a poached egg. People around us were beginning to stare. That’s how you know you’re doing it right.
We dabbled with the thought of eating healthy and ordered the smoked Carolina trout toast, and while it was delicious, it didn’t hold a candle up to the famous Korean Fried Chicken. Four massive boneless thighs were fried until ultra-crispy, tossed in a spicy, smoky gochujang hot sauce, then served with a mix of fresh greens, pickles, and herbs.
Oh, we also did a double order of their “bacon steak”, which turned out to just be an enormous plate of crispy pork belly. The table next to us could not have judged us any harder. Even the waiter seemed concerned.
As if we weren’t already disgusting enough, we capped the meal off with crack pie (a.k.a. sugar) and soft-serve ice cream from the attached Momofuku Milk Bar.
I can’t speak for lunch or dinner at Momofuku CCDC, but I can assure you that their brunch menu is decadent and depraved—and well worth the price.
Maryland Crab Dip
Chicharron, togarashi, tobiko
Shrimp bun
Spicy mayo, pickled red onion, iceberg lettuce
Shiitake bun
Hoisin, scallion, cucumber
Bacon & Egg Bun
Hollandaise, bourbon maple syrup
Shrimp & Grits
Poached egg, chili, mustard greens
Smoked Trout toast
Dill labneh, sunny side up egg, red onion
fried chicken
Tiger salad, pickles
Soft serve swirl
Crack pie
Maketto
Queenstown, New Zealand. Tia Carrere. The White Stripes.
All things I fell in love with instantly. There haven’t been many moments in my life where my first impression was “I love this place/person/thing.” I’m tough to impress.
In fact, I’m not sure there’s been a casual restaurant that has grabbed my attention and held it like this since I was at Candlenut in Singapore last year. The kind of restaurant that hits me so hard I need to go back the next day.
But Maketto did.
I still remember when Maketto opened just over a year ago—not because I went, but because my brother kept talking about it. The front was a clothing store, the back was a restaurant, upstairs was a cafe. There was a courtyard. You could sit at the chef’s counter. The food was modern Southeast Asian. Every meal sounded like the dishes I dream about when I’m alone.
This trip, I needed to go.
We make our way past the clothes, past the dining room, through the courtyard, into the adjacent building that houses the kitchen. We take our seats at the counter. I smell fish sauce and meat grilling.
The menu is relatively small—11 items—but I would eat any of them. I defer ordering to Logan and Kathryn, since they are the experts, and wait patiently.
Cambodian ground pork curry comes first. Not the most appetizing looking dish in the world, but the smell is unbelievable. That glorious mix of meat, coconut milk, and fish sauce funk isSoutheast Asia to me. The dish tastes like the what I ate in Siem Reap. As always: if a dish can transport me back to a place, it’s a dish I hold near and dear.
A ‘cheffy’ take on cumin lamb hits the table and once again, the smell wafts up and we’re all drooling. The meat is juicy, but still has a nice outer crunch. Mixed wild mushrooms and a Szechuan peppercorn mala oil pump up the earthy flavors, but they’re sliced through by a vibrant dill puree. I’m reaching over to steal the last bite when the waiter puts a plate in front of me…
This is where I decide that I will forever trust chef Erik Bruner-Yang. I make the waiter repeat his description of the dish. I try to quickly come up with a scheme to keep my brother’s hands away from it.
Six golden, crunchy, gruyere-cheese filled dumplings sit in front of me. Pillows of cheese, resting on a bed of Chinese beef chili and fermented greens. It’s everything I’ve wanted in life. I don’t deserve it. I love this dish. I tell Logan we might need another, but he tells me I need to wait. The star dish hasn’t even arrived.
A downside to seeing into the kitchen is knowing what’s coming next, and it is becoming obvious what Maketto’s finisher is: Taiwanese fried chicken.
You don’t understand. In Taiwan, you can get this street ‘snack’ that’s just these comically large pounded out chicken breasts that have been heavily spiced and deep fried until the crunch factor is turned to 10. I’ve been begging Tai Ke St. Louis to do it. I still fantasize about going back to Taipei’s night markets just to eat more.
This dish is up there with the best fried chicken I’ve had—anywhere. The crunch, the five-spice caramel, the crispy shallots…by this point, I’m not even talking. What is there to say? I’ve just fallen in love and I know it won’t be months until I see them again. I’m living in a Richard Linklater film where Julie Delpy is replaced by a modern Asian restaurant.
The chicken comes with grilled bread, which we use to mop up the bowl. We throw in the towel and head home. I wish I had gotten more chicken to go.
Cambodian Ground Pork Curry
Cumin Lamb
Gruyere Dumplings
chinese chili
Taiwanese Fried Chicken
I just couldn’t stay away. I kept thinking about you all night, Maketto. I had to come back for lunch before my flight.
We grab a matcha-cream filled donut and some coffee in the cafe upstairs for ‘breakfast’, then immediately head downstairs and order lunch. One Cambodian pork shoulder sandwich—a Cambodian variation on the banh mi, basically—one order of curried leek buns, and one order of pork buns.
I leave, and take one last look at the restaurant. I’ll miss you. But I know I’ll see you again.
Matcha Donut
Dumplings
Cambodian Sandwich
The Partisan
“So where else do you want to eat while you’re in D.C.? We could go to The Partisan—it’s got really good cocktails and the menu is almost entirely meat and charcuterie. It’s Red Apron butcher’s restaurant.”
“BOOK THAT SHIT RIGHT NOW.”
That, dear friends, is how we ended up at The Partisan (or, as I drunk texted Chris Bolyard:“I’m at your future restaurant”). And we hit it HARD.
You walk into the space and have the butcher shop to your right, the dining room to your left, and the bar in the back. We arrive early, grab a cocktail or three, then make our way to the table.
We have two menus to order from: the first shows 30 or so dishes, ranging from small bites, like $5 lupini beans with pickled ramps, to entrees, like a $120 Ancient White Park Bone-in Ribeye. The second menu is one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen, something I’ve dreamed about but never knew existed. It’s a sushi-style menu (you fill in the quantity then give it to your server) full of 39 types of charcuterie and cheese. How do I choose? Should I just get one of everything?
I put the decision in my brother’s hands and order us two light starters: crispy chicken skins with hot sauce and tallow fries with garlic and rosemary, plus a side of ranch aioli. And then the sun dried duck—basically duck jerky—with sriracha, just for good measure.
The charcuterie and cheese come out and they are glorious. I don’t even know which we had, aside from the ‘tete de pho’, a pho-braised pigs head, pulled apart. We each take a toasted tigelle, the Italian cousin to an English muffin, and go to town. The tray is cleared in under 5 minutes.
Not yet satisfied, I demand more meat. Nduja! More tigelles! Kung pao sweetbreads! House made spam musubi? Give it to me. A masa and ground pork cake? I’ve never seen such a thing, so I must eat it. Half a chicken, cooked on the rotisserie then deep fried? I have room for that.
45 minutes later and I am slowly slumping into the booth. I am food drunk, or concussed, or something. Last night I was at Pineapple and Pearls. I have pushed my body to its limits.
I watch as my friends demolish a basket of chocolate cake donut holes (if these are donut holes, then the donuts themselves must be the size of innertubes) with chocolate pudding, then move on to the buttermilk panna cotta with pineapple and (white chocolate) pearls.
The Partisan is certainly worthy of a spot in my D.C. dining rotation, though next time I go, I think I’m going to try to see how much of the charcuterie I can get through.
Fried Chicken Skins
Tallow Fries
Duck Jerky
Charcuterie Board
Nduja
Kung Pao Sweetbreads
Spam Musubi
Fried Chicken
Donuts
Little Serow
If you're wandering down 17th Street NW in D.C. trying to find the signless Little Serow, just look for the enormous line—that starts forming at 4:30pm—leading to an ordinary old basement door. There were a number of reasons that Little Serow (sounds like arrow) was on my must-try list this last visit to our nation's capital: the chef-owner is Johnny Monis, who also owns the untouchable Komi next door. The food is authentic northern Thai food, something near and dear to my heart. Plus, both Gerard Craft and Nini Nguyen told me to go. I'm a good listener.
There are no reservations. You get there, get in line, then wait your turn. Once you make it inside, you'll be greeted by darkness and bright teal walls. You don't order anything besides drinks—it's a $45 set menu. You sit, it starts.
The chefs work in a small kitchen to the left, close enough where you can see them but far enough away that you probably won't go bother them. We were seated at the long white bar (which I recommend aiming for) and excitedly got things kicked off. The first dish out was the Nam Prik Thai Orn, a spicy chili sauce made with salted fish, shrimp paste, and green peppercorns.
There's a whole mess of nam prik varieties, including the roasted green chili nam prik noom you can find at Fork & Stix, all of which are meant to be eaten as either a condiment or a dipping sauce. It's like the funky Thai version of ranch dressing, in that sense.
The Thai Orn had a deep, peppery flavor with a mild hit of shrimp paste. Paired with the veggies—or, better yet, the pork rinds—it was a perfect start to the meal. It assured me that what we were eating was nothing but authentic, the kind of food you rarely see in the U.S.
little serow Nam Prik Thai Orn
Our next two courses, the Ma Hor (sour fruit, dried shrimp, pork) and Yam Makheua Yao (eggplant, cured duck egg, mint), arrived together. We dug into the sour fruit plate first, a wonderful mix of sour and sweet. Every bite of this took me back to eating near the beaches of Southeast Asia, sitting out in the the tropical weather.
The Yam Makheua Yao brought back a different set of memories. After my first forkful of smokey eggplant, my body lit on fire from the inside out. Flashes of a misunderstanding with a Thai food stall in Singapore flooded my mind. I had tried to ask for my Som Tom salad less spicy, but apparently all she heard was MORE spicy. The result was me abandoning my lunch in a hurry, running to Starbucks to get something milky to relieve me of the burning pain in my mouth.
I wasn't going to bail on Serow for Starbucks, but like an angel sent from on high, our waitress appeared and asked if we were interested in their sweetened rice milk to help us cool down. Never has a drink tasted so good. It was like a Thai horchata. We each ended up drinking 3 or 4 glasses of that sweet nectar of the gods.
little serow rice milk drink dc
Laap Pla Duk Chiang Mai is not the prettiest dish by any stretch of the imagination, but this catfish and galangal salad is a winner. If my tastebuds were correct, it's kind of like all Thai ingredients blended together with grilled fish. Lemongrass, chilies, galangal—it punches you in the face with flavor. You can eat it with your fork, or you can spread it over cabbage, sticky rice, or whatever vegetable you prefer.
little serow Laap Pla Duk Chiang Mai
little serow dc Laap Pla Duk Chiang Mai
The runner up for favorite dish of the night went to the Tow Hu Thouk, crispy tofu tossed with ginger and peanuts. It was a fantastic mix of crisp and creamy. We definitely could have eaten another one of these.
We didn't eat much of the Het Grapao, stir fried mushrooms with basil and egg. The flavors were good—it's a vegetarian version of of the basil chicken I'd get in Singapore—but at that point it felt too heavy, and the strong soy flavor was killing my tropical buzz.
The best came last. In fact, it was the best thing I ate the entire time I was in D.C. Si Krong Muu, pork ribs with Mekhong whiskey and dill. I was surprised to see dill in a Thai dish, but a quick Googling revealed that northeastern Thailand does, in fact, use dill fairly often. The flavor was unreal.
Seriously. This has to be in my 10 top favorite things I've eaten this year. We were so full by the time they came, but still managed to polish these off. The meat, finished with a nice char, fell right off the bone. Like so many Thai dishes, the flavor was all over—sweet, sour, charred, bitter, herbaceous—but it's absolutely perfect. I thought I preferred my ribs smoked and slathered in BBQ sauce, but it turns out I was wrong.
little serow Si Krong Muu
little serow pork ribs Si Krong Muu
The meal came to a close with these tiny glutinous rice squares topped with coconut cream and toasted sesame seeds, a perfect final note for the evening.
If you're an Asian food lover, Little Serow should be at the top of your list of places to go. Sure, you'll probably be eating dinner at 5:00pm like an elderly person, but it's well worth the sacrifice.
little serow dessert coconut dc