Cross-border snacks are popular all over the world, and since New York’s two-Michelin-starred restaurant chef David Chang has become popular through a series of “delicious at your fingertips” such as Momofuku Noodle Bar, those world snacks that have always been famous for their down-to-earth atmosphere have become a popular food in the world. It is not so much that it is easier to reach international borderless boundaries in the field of “eating”, but that people always have an irresistible enthusiasm for the “reachable” sense of grounding in snacks.
Finger snacks are being reborn by creative celebrity chefs and are becoming popular in the Western food world at an astonishing rate. The starting point of this wave of food is the Taiwanese guà buns that have been popular for nearly a decade at Momofuku Noodle Bar in New York’s East Village.
The Momofuku Group, which owns more than a dozen stores under its name, runs ramen restaurants, light food restaurants, sweet houses, fried chicken shops, and even Ko, a fine dining restaurant that has won two Michelin stars for nine years. Momofuku has infinite scenery, but few people know about the bitterness of the past. When the Noodle Bar was first unveiled, it was once looked down by the industry and diners, and it almost closed; And what turned things around was the Taiwanese classic snack that Chef David Chang wrote into the menu on a whim
Cut bags
——Simple and delicious Taiwanese meat buns, in the hands of David Chang, conjured up a fusion of flavors such as shiitake mushrooms in hoisin sauce and spicy shrimp lettuce, which is right in the picky taste buds of New Yorkers. It can be said that without this small bag, there would be no Momofuku today. At the same time, if David Chang hadn’t given it a go, bag cutting would never have been so popular. Since the bun, diners and chefs have become enthusiastic about snacks, with Tacos tacos in Mexican food trucks and Arancini fried rice balls, a famous Sicilian snack, leaping over the door and becoming regular customers on the menu in trendy restaurants.
A restaurant famous for selling snacks
Momofuku Noodle
Bar
David Chang’s passion for snacks is not limited to buns; Just as two-star restaurant Ko moved into a new location, David Chang converted the original 12-seat restaurant into a fried chicken shop, happily selling down-to-earth American fried chicken sandwiches. The open kitchen, no seating, fried chicken sandwiches and Fuku with sake and funky music echoing in the dining room have been wildly sought after by local diners as soon as they were launched. As we all know, the best fried chicken restaurants in New York are all concentrated in Harlem, north of Central Park, where the black population of Harlem, the fried chicken chefs here are all from there – the improved and upgraded American traditional fried chicken, while maintaining a rough style, the chicken is delicate and juicy, and the spicy taste is immersed in rich Asian characteristics, both the length of China’s KFC sucking finger original chicken and wheat spicy chicken wings, sandwiched in buttered potato bread, a few slices of sour sauce melon, forcing the author to create a miracle of clocking in every Friday night for six weeks. The latest Fuku+ launched in Midtown upgrades Fuku’s fried chicken experience, and the $400 party fried chicken dinner is enough for 6~8 people to eat.
Asian cuisine
In addition to buns and fried chicken, kebabs from roadside stalls have also risen tall in the West – there is a “Toriyasu” restaurant on the Upper East Side of New York that specializes in Japanese yakitori, and the Omakase, which is grilled with fresh materials and rigorous techniques, has been favored by the Michelin jury and has been wearing a star for many years. Robataya NY, a restaurant not far from Momofuku Ramen Restaurant in Shimojo East Village, transplanted Hokkaido-style Japanese skewers to New York—behind the fan-shaped counter, two apron chefs wrapped in headscarves and cloud-like cloth shirts stood, every time a customer placed an order, a turnover fish jumped on the countertop, hooked the dishes with a long-handled wooden spatula, skewered bamboo skewers neatly, pinched some coarse sea salt, sprinkled evenly on the grill, and when it was cooked, he picked up a wooden spatula and delivered the food directly to the customer’s table. The whole process is smooth and completed in one go, which really makes people secretly admire the basic skills of the audience – eating a decent appetizer here also requires a small blood loss.
Continental cuisine
Food at your fingertips is certainly not exclusive to Orientals. The aforementioned cheese-fried rice ball Arancini (Croquette in English-speaking countries), originally a civilian snack in Sicily, Italy, about the size of our hemp ball, but in 2014 became the most photographed and popular starchy appetizer in the British and American high-end restaurants, especially in newly opened restaurants. The portion is shrunk into a small ball, two mouthfuls can be taken together, but the content is by no means ambiguous – Iberian black pig ham diced, cuttlefish juice that has been on fire for a while, and even the favorite pig blood of the Nordic people have become the stepping stone to this ordinary rice ball “taking the opportunity to take the position”, and the most exaggerated, to mix black truffles into rice, with such a handwriting, how can it not become expensive in a second?
When it comes to dim sum as a meal, the Spaniards call it first, and others dare not call it, after all, the popularity of Tapas has exceeded everyone’s imagination. However, the British, who cannot cook, also have something to say in this matter. In addition to giving sandwiches to the world, Britain’s most well-known and ubiquitous national street food is, of course, fish & chips! The British people not only love to eat and eat often, but also keen to use it as the only “food culture export strategy” – in a few British chefs who mix reasonably well, such as national treasure Gordon Ramsay, once pushed high-end fish and chips in Las Vegas; Michelin chef Jason Atherton, Ramsay’s first overseas store, high-end British cuisine The Clock Tower, a highly acclaimed dish is also a whole piece of fried cod, and delicious hand-cut fries with several sauces; And another British cook, Paul Liebrandt, who is very popular in the United States, once cooked fish and chips, which is so tall that he does not even know his family.
Mexican cuisine
In the Western food world in recent years, the word “counterattack” is perfect for Mexican cuisine. Mexico, the “backyard of the United States” and the largest importer of minorities, is best known for tacos – I remember driving straight into Queens with friends in the middle of the night, standing on the side of the street and munching on burritos, it was really enjoyable; Although the characteristics are distinctive, they lack fineness, and they are always inseparable from the true color of roadside stalls. Now, this wave of Mexican “premiumization” experienced by the Western food industry has begun to emerge as early as the year before when Jean George opened an ABC Cocina, followed by Danny Bowien, a Californian Korean chef known for “American Sichuan Chinese food”, used Mission Cantina to catch New York hipsters, and in the first half of this year, a number of “Tex-Mex” (Texas-style Mexican) restaurants emerged to bring Tacos “Low-end Mexican cuisine” led by the trend has been pushed to the cusp of the trend.
This year’s new Cosme has revolutionized Mexican cuisine. Interestingly, compared to other Mexican restaurants, Cosme is probably the purest of its pedigree. Behind it is Chef Enrique Olvera, a Mexican creative restaurant No. 16 in the “World’s 50 Best Restaurants”. If Jean George and Bowien are both soup and not dressing, essentially “traditional Mexican cuisine”, then Olvera focuses on using the most cutting-edge mix-and-match ideas in the food world, taking the strengths of each family, giving the stereotypical “corn, tomato salsa, avocado” Mexican three old styles, a truly cosmopolitan urban elite style. For example, a $17 sea urchin tortilla (Tostada) – New Yorkers are familiar with sea urchins, but it is quite unusual to put sea urchins on top of shortbread and add some beef bone marrow to salsa; A plate of Italian-style fish sashimi, but borrowed the spicy taste of Mexican green pepper straight prickly prickly, along the way with Thai fish sauce and dried and powdered Middle Eastern black lime – eat five or six thin pieces of fish meat, the tip of the tongue will go around the whole earth; A traditional Mexican crispy fried pork rind, originally a snack dipped in hot sauce, served with extremely thin slices of carrots and avocado pieces, is enriched by layers. My favorite dish on the entire menu is Cobia alpastor, a few pieces of fried fish, thick and juicy, similar in taste to Chilean sea bass, but not as good as sea bass fat, with onion cilantro and pineapple in sugar water, rolled into the cake; The finishing touch is a delicate buttery pineapple jam puree followed by a pinch of strongly smelling cilantro – and the refreshing sea breeze on Playa del Carmen Beach and a few dark-skinned Mexican girls on the beachhead emerge.