In Which Our Food Guru Experiences The Fun of Bun

In Which Our Food Guru Experiences The Fun of Bun by jbrau

November 30, 2007, 10:22 am
Filed under: Uncategorized

I’d Like a Bucket of Krang, Please

Bun
143 Grand Street, New York, NY
(212) 431-7999

by Joshua Brau

Of the four East Asian cuisines most popular in the U.S.—Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese—I’ve always loved the latter most, but only in my dreams.

The thing is, I’d eaten far less Vietnamese food than Chinese, Japanese, and Thai, if for no other reason than that Vietnamese is just harder to find in much of the country. And the Vietnamese I have had has often been subpar. But I always preferred the flavors of Vietnam even if I had not seen them articulated at the highest possible level. Are you getting bored by this paragraph? I SURE AM.

My go-to Vietnamese spot was for a while Omai in Chelsea. I had a few good meals there and the vibe is decent. Nothing memorable though.

But why go to Chelsea when I could walk out my door, just on the cusp of Chinatown in what I’m going to start calling Little Shitaly (it just came to me as I typed this, I swear, though I can’t believe it had taken this long)?

There are plenty of Vietnamese restaurants around here, but because it’s called Chinatown, I’m reluctant to try restaurants of any other Asian persuasions.

“People of the Sun (live)” — Rage Against the Machine (mp3)

Except, of course, for Banh Mi paradi Banh Mi Saigon Bakery on Mott Street and Viet-Nam Banh Mi So on Broome, both less than a 60 second walk from my door if the traffic signals are flowing. These places are clutch, with tasty sandwiches under $4.

It may not make sense, but I tend to assume that a Vietnamese—or any non-Chinese for that matter—restaurant in Chinatown is a tourist trap. I’ll admit I’m probably wrong about this.

Based on a mention on the Amateur Gourmet, I tried Pho Grand, and even ordered exactly what the AG recommended, which was great. I have no excuse for not returning…I guess Pho Grand just never got into my head like certain places do.

I’d also been to Bao 111 a bunch of times, the first of them in the glorious summer of 2004 when the place was new and chef Michael “Bao” Huynh was still cooking there. My early memories are fond, but each successive visit was more and more disappointing.

Now, after opening Mai House with Drew Nieporent, Chef Huynh has a place of his own on Grand Street. Lucky for me it’s close to home, so I got to watch with excitement as the place was built out and the buzz grew. It is officially called Bu’n, but I’m just going to call it Bun.

Bun website

Also, it’s pronounced “boon” but call it whatever you want: the food is legitimately awesome.

My first meal there was on a Saturday night. Me and my crew arrived just before it got busy and were seated within a few minutes by this really young dude who looked like a Vietnamese Yakuza. There was just something a little dangerous about him; he is definitely a ninja of some sort.

Given that the place is owned by the chef and his wife, there sure were a lot of other people (including the ninja/Yakuza boy) who appeared to be in charge, or at least were acting that way. I mean, if you’re wearing a suit and tie in a relatively casual restaurant like this and acting like you own the place, you probably do.

Bun was in its third or fourth week at this point, and probably still dealing with some growing pains. The servers were more than a little harried, and different dudes kept coming up to our table and repeating the work of their colleagues.

Finally a friendly gentleman in a sweater (honestly, this guy seemed like he’d walked in off the street and straight to our table) gave us some recommendations, and we more or less took his suggestions.

At the very least everything we tried was noteworthy; the best were unforgettable.

First, the merely noteworthy. The 7 spices duck hearts and tongue, recommended as a must-order by the guy in the sweater, wasn’t as weird as we expected (it wasn’t my first run-in with duck tongues, unfortunately), but it wasn’t as interesting as we’d hoped either.

The hearts had a delectable rich meaty consistency while the tongue just tasted like cartilage with a bone in it—I really don’t see why anyone would want to eat something that requires you to pull a large piece of cartilaginous bone out of your mouth each time you take a bite. Both organs were waaaaay too salty, to the point of being a distraction from the fact that we were eating the hearts and tongues of adorable ducks.

The shrimp and Berkshire pork belly rolls were underwhelming, but only in the shadow of the wild boar blood sausages (nothing like the Irish, Argentine or Spanish blood sausages you’ve tried) and the beef short rib wrapped on lemongrass skewers.

Both were examples of why the small plates method works so well when executed at a level this high: you’re left wanting more of each dish; there’s never enough for you to have had your fill of any particular plate, provided you’re dining with a couple of friends.

My favorite dish, by far, was the Momofukian duck confit, a succulent arrangement of crispy duck and slices of daikon pancake (imagine the best polenta you’ve ever had and multiply that by 7) under the cover of a beautifully fried duck egg. It’s a “last meal” type of dish for me, crowned by a red vinegar soy dipping sauce that I could have drank if I knew it wouldn’t have burned quite a bit on its way down.

Chef Bao is a master of-a the sauce, each time finding a perfect balance of sweetness acidity and spice, allowing his sauces to complement not overtake the dish they adorn. The same goes for his Pho. We tried the Hue style spicy bun, a pho of beef shin and Berkshire pork butt with a spicy lemongrass broth so beautifully clear I would baptize my first-born son in it.

The other noodle dish I tried, sitting alone at the bar late on a cold night, was the bun nem foie gras, a bowl of vermicelli noodles with topped with ground duck and foie gras meatballs, a cut up crispy (read: deep fried) spring roll, and the requisite fresh herbs, along with pickled shaved papaya that added a delightful crunch. Priced between $10 and $12, any of Bun’s noodle dishes, either with broth or without, make a perfect-sized meal for one.

“Catch My Disease” — Ben Lee (mp3)

Andrea Strong’s review

A note on ordering: Our server suggested we order three dishes per person, but based on what we saw on the plates of our neighbors, we ordered two each, and that was enough. Also, if you have a lot of questions about a dish, which I often do, you’ll need to be aggressive; the frantic servers must be coerced into giving a detailed description of a given plate.

For desert, we ordered the only available choice: sweet dumplings that were so gooey I imagine that’s what Krang from ninja turtles would have tasted like if you could take a spoon to him.

“Northwestern Girls” — Say Hi (mp3)

As far as I’m concerned, Bun’s food is so good that with a little luck it will become a foodie destination if not a downtown hotspot. Despite it’s Soho address (143 Grand Street between Crosby and Lafayette), there’s something incoherent about the atmosphere and the room that suggests a slight identity crisis.

The room is sleek and modern, but the back wall by the bathroom is covered in pictures of lame celebrities who’ve eaten at the chef’s other restaurants. There are the gangsters in shiny suits and then the friendly round-eyes, who seem to be working in an altogether different restaurant.

And then there’s the music, which was just plain weird. When I sat alone at the bar, the server kept calling me “Dude” and “Bro.” I don’t even like when people I know and like call me dumb names like that (yes I know I use the former pretty frequently here).

And even though I may look like a Dude or a Bro, I’m not one. Also, I don’t want to shake hands with the waiter after the meal.

Still, these complaints pale in comparison to the joy the food brought me, and I’ll suffer through the wack music and confusing service for another bite of those daikon pancakes any day.

Joshua Brau writes about food at Epicuriocity. He lives in Little Shitaly, New York. He can be reached epicuriocity@gmail.com.

JB is the player and the game

PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING

Sports Illustrated swimsuit mixtape.

Emily Haines and the hard turtle exoskeleton.

A private dictatorship of TMNT.

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