Bon Appetit + Momofuku = Flavor Explosion!

I'm Dan Felder, the Head of R&D for Momofuku.

Matt Rudofker, Chef de Cuisine, Momofuku Ssam Bar.

So the Momofuku culinary lab started three years ago.

It's an opportunity for us to develop a space

that's just about creativity.

Working with fermented foods and traditional products

that we use a ton 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,

some farro bonji, and we sat down,

were tasting just the basic grilled fish dashi

adding different quantities of the different bonjis

in different ratios til we find something that you're like,

Wow, that's cool, that's really interesting.

That's flavorful, that's unique.

For the arctic char, what we were originally doing

is we're serving it with pine nuts

and we were seasoning it with a little bit of shiru dashi

just to add that little bit of umami flavor to it.

Now instead of using the shiru dashi,

we're using a fermented pine nut product

supplied from the lab, and that gives us that

in essence 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.

That moment is one of the most fun for us,

to see what Matt and the guys at Ko and Noodle and Ma Peche

then go and make.

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.

(relaxing electronic music)