Inside the Relationship Between Momofuku's Culinary Lab and Restaurants

I'm Dan Felder,

the head of R&D for Momofuku.

Matt Rudofker, Chef de Cuisine, Momofuku Ssäm Bar.

[Dan] So the Momofuku Culinary Lab

started three years ago.

It was an opportunity for us to develop a space

that's just about creativity,

and working with fermented foods and traditional products

that we use a ton of 'em in our restaurants,

things like soy sauce and miso and vinegar.

As the lab started out small

and they were first getting a few different things,

Dan would come here, bring us lots of little vials

of different bonjis and hozons, things for us to taste,

a vast range of unique flavors and products

that we're able to create dishes around.

One example is the porgy dish,

we've had it on the menu for a long time

but in different iterations.

Dan brought me some spelt bonjis, some freekeh bonjis,

and farro bonji, we sat down,

we're tasting just the basic grilled fish dashi,

adding different quantities

of the different bonji's in different ratios

'til we find something that,

wow, that's cool, that's really interesting,

that's flavorful,

that's unique.

For the Artic Char, what we were originally doing,

is we're serving it with pine nuts

and we were seasoning it with a little bit of shirodashi

just to add that a little bit of umami flavor to it,

now instead of using the shirodashi,

we're using a fermented pine nut product

supplied from the lab and that gives us that,

in a sense, the amino acid,

the umami flavor,

but instead of in a sense diluting the pine nut flavor,

we're ramping that pine nut flavor up.

[Dan] That moment is one of the most fun for us

to see what Matt

and the guys at Ko and Noodle, and Má Pêche,

then go and make.

These products are sort of like evolutions

of traditional, East Asian fermentation's,

using all these great like grains

and things we can get from upstate New York

that are very local and beautiful.

You know we've really only scratched the surface.

So that's exciting to see

because we're tasting things

that we really haven't tasted before.