A Hot Bowl of Warm Contentedness

Dassara Ramen

Annie and I unexpectedly found ourselves on the hunt for ramen Saturday evening. We searched high and low for a new place for noodles and soup. We've already been to Zuzu Ramen on 3^rd Avenue a couple of times. We'd heard about Narudo Ramen on 5^th Avenue and just haven't gotten there yet. We were looking for something a bit more special...or at least something we hadn't heard of before. And we found that at Dassara Ramen on Smith Street. Driving around looking for a ramen place in Brooklyn, Google didn't let us down and steered us there. The clincher was...they have the ramen burger. And we didn't have to wait on a ridiculous line in hipstertopia to get it. As a matter of fact, we didn't even have to wait for a table. We even got a parking spot right across the street from the place.


Once again we found ourselves in a restaurant serving ostensibly Asian food and not an Asian employee in sight. What an interesting trend. But, at least the wait staff wasn't wearing pajamas. Although, perhaps if they had been in sleepwear, they'd have been a bit more attentive. The clientele was an odd mixture of bitter, miserable looking hipsters (or Try-Hards as a friend has coined them), very jovial-seeming yuppies, Asian families(which totally threw me) and us. You've got to be doing something right if you're a white guy running a restaurant serving Asian food and Asians come to your place. That's a good sign right away.


The décor is vaguely Asian. There are some posters on one wall and a giant digital display taking up the other. The images that ran across that wall were quite interesting. There were car crashes, Spider Man, Powerpuff Girls, James Bond (at least it was the Connery Bond, so that's good), the Statue of Liberty...there was more. It was a bit overstimulating actually. For a little bit I couldn't stop looking at it. It actually distracted me from conversing with Annie for a minute there.


Let me get the negatives out of the way first. They're small ones really, but sort of important. The service kind of sucked. It's a small room, maybe 30 seats, and the waitress was moving around a lot. But she took forever to take an order. It took a year and a day after we ordered our drinks and then it was another 6 months before she finally came back to take our food order. If you run a small establishment, customer service has to be a priority unless your product is extraordinary. Dassara was good, really good...but not so good that it's OK to neglect your customers. The second thing is...you can't run an Asian-themed restaurant and run out of Sapporo at 630pm. That's just poor planning right there.

Ramen Burger and Chips

Those small negatives aside, the food was a big positive in making up for it. We started out with Steamed Buns Stuffed with Falafel and Hummus. This makes Mike happy. I love falafel and hummus. Put that in a silky and sweet bao and I'm a happy guy. The falafel was crunchy and spicy, the hummus had great flavor and there was just enough red pepper flake in there for some heat. They rotate what they stuff the buns with (yeah, I said “stuff the buns” ya fucking pervs.), so you'll have to take your chances. We also tried the ramen burger as I mentioned before. The noodle buns (buns seem to be a theme in this paragraph) were interesting and kind of good. A little difficult to eat, as they sort of fall apart after you take a bite, but what else could you expect when you make a roll out of noodles. But the star of that show was the burger itself. It simply burst with flavor. Quite honestly, I didn't need the gimmicky noodle roll...I'd have been thrilled to eat that burger on a regular potato roll. Word of advice, don't add cheese. It's not often I say something as blasphemous as that, but cheese just doesn't seem like a good idea. We didn't do it and we don't think you should either.


For our ramen, which is the reason we came here, Annie and I both got the Xi'an Ramen. This was ground lamb and sausage in a spicy broth with cilantro and a poached egg. I'm pretty sure I tasted some cumin and some chili in there too. Once you break open the egg and mix it into the broth, it's just a bowl of rich happiness. The noodles weren't as good as the ones we had at Mission but still they were good enough. There's just something about a big, steaming bowl of ramen that hits me in that happy spot. It's somehow satisfying and calming almost. When it's done and I'm looking down at a few drops of broth and whatever I didn't slurp up or getting get my chopsticks to grab onto, I smile and sigh contentedly. The only thing that could make the moment after finishing a great bowl of ramen better is a cigarette. But as I haven't had one of those in nearly 12 years, this is as close to content as I can get.


There was a bunch of stuff on the menu that I'd like to try eventually. There was a lamb bao that I'd like to get my teeth into and a mushroom ramen I'd like to slurp. They serve brunch there on Saturdays and Sundays and I could definitely dig into a bowl of breakfast ramen with bacon broth. Dassara also does some kind of smoked salmon ramen and chicken and waffles. Brunch must be interesting there. And as we know from my review of Talde...I'm a fan of brunch with chopsticks.


So, if you find yourself in need of warm contentedness, get yourself a bowl of ramen. And Dassara is a good place to find it.


Dassara Ramen
271 Smith Street
Brooklyn, NY, 11231

718-643-0781

Pumpkin Chili

Pumpkin Chili
1lb ground turkey
1 yellow onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
3 carrots, chopped
2 chipotle peppers, minced (and some of the adobo sauce)
15oz black beans, rinsed
15oz pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie mix)
15oz diced tomatoes
8oz pumpkin ale (I'd recommend Weyerbacher or Shipyard, but use what you like.)
4oz pumpkin coffee (If you've got it. I happened to have some, so I threw it in there.)
canola oil
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp oregano
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 nutmeg
1/2 tbsp chili powder
1/4 ground ginger
1/4 tsp ancho chili powder
1 tbsp tomato paste

1. Add oil to cast iron dutch oven and heat on high until shimmering. Add turkey cook until browned. Then add the vegetables and season with salt and pepper. Cook for about 3 minutes and then add the assorted spices. Cook for another few minutes. Until onions begin to look translucent.
   
2. Add beer and coffee to deglaze the pot. Stir and bring to a simmer. Lower the heat to low. Add the pumpkin and tomatoes and stir in to combine. Then add chipotles and tomato paste. Let simmer for at least an hour. Go back to stir and check on it every 20 minutes or so.
   
3. After an hour, add the beans and stir to combine. If the consistency is too thick add some more beer. Let simmer for another 20 or 30 minutes. Let it sit off the heat for at least another 30 minutes before eating. You could probably let this cook as long as you like as long as you keep adding beer/water to keep the consistency how you like it.
   

This was fantastic on warm tortillas. It was also great the next day. The flavors really come together after a day in the fridge.  

This Ain't Your Mama's Chinese Food

The first thing you should know about Mission Chinese Food is be prepared to wait. The second thing you should know is that the food is really really good and is totally worth waiting for. This isn't greasy, Brooklyn style Chinese food (which is wonderful in and of its own right). You're not going to order a quart of wonton soup and a pint of beef mei fun and be out of there in 10 minutes. Annie and I got to the tiny lil walk-down store front around 6:45 and were told there would be about a 90 minute wait. Gotta give them this though, they're pretty cool about the waiting thing. The lil Asian guy took our phone number and said he'd call when the table was just about ready for us. Which left us to choose from one of the plethora of bars in the area for us to bide our time. We skipped past the “BRO” bar on the corner and settled in for a couple of pints at some Irish joint on the next block. When we did get seated right around 8:30 or so, the wait was up to 2+ hours and people were gladly waiting. As an aside, there was a giant gaggle of what we took to be “Woo” girls in the Irish joint. I became somewhat obsessed with the idea that they'd be on one side of the room and the Bros would be on the other and just shout “WOOOOO”...”BROOOOO” at each other. I'm still laughing at that image in my head.

When we were eventually seated I was struck by the fact that the only actually Chinese person in the joint was the “maitre'd” (Which is a real stretch of the term being that he was wearing cargo shorts and a retro Batman t-shirt.) All the cooks (you can see into the kitchen on your way into the dining room.) were white guys. The wait staff is all white girls...even the bartender was a white girl. I couldn't get over that our waitress looked very much like she just woke up in the basement and stumbled up the stairs and started her shift 15 minutes before we got there. She was wearing pajama pants and crocs and she totally had bed-head and covered it with a backwards baseball cap. Considering how small the dining room actually is, they could probably hold a maximum of 40 people in there, I was surprised that it was tight. Annie and I had plenty of room to enjoy our gluttonous ways.


Since we went to Surfish a couple of years ago, Annie gets a little excited when she sees beef heart on the menu. So we started with Beef Heart and Scallop Sashimi. I wouldn't have expected those ingredients to be almost refreshing, but they were. There was some citrus from I think grapefruit and a bit of heat from peppercorns. Quite good, although I wish there was more of it. But that will happen when you're sharing appetizers.

I want more dumplings.

Pork, Eel and Celery Dumplings in Red Oil were unlike any other dumplings I've ever had. They looked just like any other dumplings...but they sure didn't taste like any other dumplings. Completely fantastic. I like how they took something that is usually relatively heavy and lightened it without sacrificing flavor...instead the actually added more.


The last appetizer we had were the Pok Pok Pig Tails. How could I not try pig tails? It had to be done. The verdict is I won't be doing it again. As it turns out, pig tails are mostly fat and vertebrae...that's not good eating in my book. The Wo Hop-like tar sauce (that's what Annie calls the Wo Hop dumpling sauce) that came with the pig tails was a bit too salty for my taste too. Although when you got all the components together (pig tail, tar sauce, pickled radish) it wasn't bad but not good enough that I'd order it again. But at least I can now say I've eaten pig tails. I want to go back and try pig's ears. I wonder what that's like.


Since we went ahead and shared 3 appetizers between us, we figured we should share 3 entrees too. It's Chinese food (even if it was a very stepped up version), we could just take any leftovers home. So we started with Combination Fried Rice which had dungeness crab, BBQ pork jowl, pickled pineapples and curry. One day I'll figure out how to properly eat rice with chopsticks, but this wasn't that day. In the end I wound up using the soup spoon to get at the yummy rice. Overall it was pretty good although I thought the crab was a touch dry and there could've been more pineapple to provide counterpoint to the curry flavor. We took the majority of this home.

The Spicy Scallop Noodles needed some scallops. There were none. I'm pretty sure it was an oversight in the kitchen of some sort. But really, we were halfway through eating the dish before we even noticed there were no scallops. The noodles were perfect and spicy as hell. But so so so tasty. I knew it would hurt and I still couldn't stop eating it. Annie quit on them after I couple of bites. These noodles literally made me sweat. (Yeah, I know “literally” is now a meaningless word, see Steve and Mike Save the World – Episode 49, but I had to do it.) My lips were still burning an hour later and I'm good with that. When you manage to get the peas wrapped up in the noodles they provided a nice sweetness to counteract the chili oil. But here's a warning...you know when you order Chinese food and they put the “spicy” dishes in red on the menu as an alert. Then you order General Tso's chicken or something and expect heat and almost laugh because there is none. When Mission Chinese Food warns you that something is going to be spicy, they ain't fuckin' around! On the menu they have little flames next to the spicy dishes. One flame means “Spicy”. Two flames means “Very Freakin Spicy”. The noodles had 1 flame and they were VERY FREAKIN SPICY. They have a dish called Kung Pao Pastrami that has 2 flames and I HAVE to try that. I've just got to know what the second spicy level is like.

Such glorious soup

The star of the show at Mission for us had to be the Mapo Ramen. This was just plain wonderful. The pork fat broth when mixed with the broken coddled egg was just a bowl full of rich, almost pornographic goodness. The noodles, were again, absolutely perfect. I even liked the tofu, and no one in their right mind “likes” tofu. I gave some serious thought to just slamming my face into the bowl and eating it like that much like I'd imagine Animal from the Muppets would've done. I didn't think Annie would approve, so I didn't do it. But I wanted to. I almost regret not doing it. I wish I had a gallon of that soup to eat for dinner right now. Of all the stuff I ate, that's the one dish that I'll almost certainly order next time I go. I liked and/or loved everything else besides the pig tails, but I NEED to eat that ramen again.

3 appetizers and 3 entrees cost us about $50 each, not too pricey at all considering this is supposed to be one of the best restaurants in the city. Wasn't even that hard to find parking down there. They only take a few reservations and I think they have to be 2 weeks in advance. But who cares? Just make sure you allot enough time...leave your name and go knock back a couple of drinks somewhere like we did. AND if you really can't bring yourself to wait once you get there, you can always go around the corner to Katz's Deli. Or what we should've done, gone around the corner and gotten brisket or pastrami sandwiches to go for the next day...DAMN IT, why didn't I think of that then. Oh right, because I was completely stuffed. No big deal, if you can't tell from this review, I'll definitely be going back there again.


Mission Chinese Food
154 Orchard Street
NY, NY, 10002

212-529-8800