Like wild honey, great wines, and prize Iberian hogs, world-class chefs tend to have their own distinctive terroir. Antonin Carême’s ornate creations were a product of Napoleon’s imperial Paris. Thomas Keller is a Napa Valley chef, not a New York one, and despite his recent attempts to peddle burgers and hot dogs downtown, Daniel Boulud will always be a creature of the Upper East Side. Then there’s David Chang, who perhaps more than any notable chef of the past ten years has cultivated his own idiosyncratic, highly local sense of style and taste. Since the original Momofuku Noodle Bar opened six years ago in the East Village, his empire has grown by only two restaurants and expanded just four blocks. In Chang country, the best seats are at the bar, the gourmet dish is pork belly, not filet mignon, and dinner has a decided downtown quality to it—a sense, as you slurp your noodles and devour your pork buns, that you’re involved in the local culinary equivalent of a midnight rave.
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