Restaurant review, Momofuku Noodle Bar, New York.

It doesn't look much from the outside. A plain glass frontage, with a paper menu tacked up on the door. Only the relative spruceness of the building, in a stretch of flyblown ethnic restaurants and head shops, gives a clue that we have reached our destination – one of New York's foodie places of pilgrimage, the legendary Momofuku Noodle Bar. Outside, a British tourist is taking a photo of the menu on her phone. Oh, hang on, it's me. Sorry, I seem to have got a bit overexcited.

Last time I was in Manhattan's East Village, more than a decade ago, this was a scuzzy part of town – it has since been gentrified, and is now just seedy – and Momofuku's inspirational owner, David Chang, was still on a pilgrimage of his own, cooking his way around Tokyo.

Chang went on to open his New York version of a ramen bar, Momofuku, in 2004, and inadvertently started a revolution. With no reservations, no fancy manners, and no respect for purist convention, Momofuku was ecumenical in its approach, mashing up influences from Japan, Korea, China and the US, and creating in the process one legendary dish – the iconic pork bun. Two soft, steamed buns, holding a thick slice of pork belly, and finished with hoisin sauce, spring onion and cucumber, it became a sensation. Only in America, and more specifically, only in the overheated, neophiliac climate of New York dining, would customers queue patiently outside the hot new place for the latest must-eat dish. Or so we used to think. Hollow laugh.

Possibly the only empire built on a bun, the Chang dynasty grew to include three more restaurants in New York, plus a bestselling cookbook, and a bakery chain, the Momofuku Milk Bar, serving crazy-sounding specialities like crack pie and compost cookies. With new branches in Sydney and Toronto, the pork bun has become the sandwich that ate the world.

So I thought it was time to go back to where it all began, the original noodle bar, before my fellow critics discovered I'd never eaten a Momofuku pork bun and had me blackballed, or barbecued. Arriving for lunch a mere eight years after the early-adopters, I felt genuinely excited. A feeling which instantly evaporated on being politely, but firmly, directed to wait for my guest on the pavement outside, in the middle of a July heatwave. Momofuku doesn't seat incomplete parties, even ones who have opted to lunch at the fashionably early hour of noon. I don't mind queuing outside a full restaurant, but queuing outside a half-empty one? Way to harshen the buzz.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk