THE NEW FORMAL

摘要

In December 2008, then-New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni dropped a culinary bombshell. He bestowed three stars on Momofuku Ssam Bar, an East Village dining room with no tablecloths, no elegant glassware, and no coffee service. There, inside a shoebox-size space stocked with benches and paper napkins, diners used tongs to yank at a communal roasted pork butt and, with their hands, wrapped the drippy tendrils in lettuce cups. No restaurant so casual had received such a distinction, and the news spread. "Chefs from around the world would show up at Ssam," Momofuku chef-owner David Chang later said, citing the likes of Rene Redzepi from Copenhagen's Noma and Ferran Adria from Spain. "That review took everything to a different stratosphere."