Momofuku Seiobo

“What’s a Momofuku and why do I care?” we hear you say. Momofuku Noodle, Ssam Bar, Ko, Milk Bar and Ma Peche are a bracket restaurants in Manhattan owned by chef David Chang. They’re best known for their unflinching dedication to loud rock’n’roll’n’hip hop and their bang on high/low culture mix, from country hams to shavings of frozen foie gras. Chang’s empire is built on sweating the details, on ducking where others weave and no small amount of sheer bloody mindedness. So it is that he’s opened his first restaurant outside New York not in Las Vegas or Los Angeles, not in Harajuku or Shoreditch, but in Pyrmont, in the former penal colony of New South Wales. And so it is that he chooses to follow the desserts after 14 or so courses with not dainties, frillies or airy, insubstantial confections, but a slab of pork, as delicate as a punch in the mug, and every bit as arresting. There’s no cutlery for this, just a couple of hot towels and a whole lot of licking of fingers.

There was a lot of talk before Chang and chefs Ben Greeno and Peter Serpico opened the doors to Seiobo, located at the newly redux casino, Star. “We’re in the middle of Asia in a city heaving with mod-Asian restaurants,” said the city’s snackerati. “What the hell can some Pavement loving Korean American dude from New York add to the mix?” Plenty. For a start, you couldn’t really accuse Seiobo of being mod-Asian. There’s Asian stuff on the menu, sure. Soft, Chinese style steamed buns are spread with hoisin sauce, then filled with pickled cucumber and slices of brined-then-roasted pork belly. And yeah, the meal could very well start with glutinous rice balls or a bowl of pickled carrots, radish, shitake mushrooms and turnips. Hopefully there’ll be a serve of the house made kimchi on offer, all spicy and rankly fermented.

It’s just from there, the meal can pretty much take you anywhere, from an incredibly restrained, elegant dish of buttery-rich lightly cured striped trumpeter belly lifted with a swirl of pureed warrigal greens to the sharp, salty crunch of fried sand sprats. Here, the whole thumb sized fish is strapped in to a crisp potato chip - it sort of resembles a snowshoe - and gives the impression that the fish is about to luge straight into your mouth.    

Seiobo is a rollercoaster ride of acid, crunch, root vegetables, pickles, and seeds with meat highlights, leaving you hungry for more at every turn. An earthy dish of crisp skinned slices of lamb belly, say, with purple kale white and golden beetroot, a slash of toasty pumpkin seed sauce and a scattering of pumpkin seeds over the top. Or roasted Jerusalem artichokes with little nibs of smoked eel, pink grapefruit and a puree of sunflower seeds.

While Seiobo is its own restaurant entirely, it does take quite a few cues from sister restaurant Ko. On the plus side, that means an intimate restaurant experience where you get face time with the chefs, as they serve you straight from kitchen to counter. The minus? The online reservation system. Getting a table here is a serious pain in the arse. It’s so hard to book, in fact, that it might turn you off going at all. You have to make a special account. Then you’ll be taken to the reservations screen where you’ll be given the option to book for one, two or four at 7, 7.30 or 8pm. You’ll be faced with a series of red crosses and maybe, just maybe, a green tick or two. Once you’ve secured a booking you have two minutes to put your details in and commit to the reservation. It actually has a clock that counts down in front of you like a bomb timer. It’s incredibly stressful.

But that’s the hard bit over. And we do strongly recommend you persevere through the unnecessarily complex booking system because at the other end is an incredible meal. And that doesn’t mean you’re about to find yourself reverently and silently at the altar of Chefdom. No, this is a fun restaurant, where the Beastie Boys’ Sabotage is chased down by LCD Soundsystem’s Someone Great, blasted out of the water by ACDC’s Have a Drink on Me. 

The 15 course set menu is $175 (add $95 a head for matched drinks - well worth it if you like freaky, interesting gear like red rice sake and Hitachino beer or just want to be told what to do). It’s certainly not the most expensive deg in town (Tetsuya’s is $210 + $95 for wine) but it’s not exactly a stop-drop-and-eat proposition, either. But let’s assume you’ve made the smart move to go ahead and eat here. You’ll hopefully get a spot at the bar, where you get to be right amongst the action, with an incredible custard-like set egg doused in brown butter and chicken sauce crisped up with toasted rice. Or maybe there’ll be slices of raw kingfish topped with a miniscule dice of white asparagus and blood orange, a little olive oil, and a light sprinkle of powdered green tea. It’s about here that you can see the kitchen crew shift gears with a dish of pickled onions, grilled spring onion, redlof, toasted coriander seeds and semi-dried mulberries. It’s got this raw acidity tempered by sweetness that works really well, making your entire mouth snap to attention.

But then you might be met with rags of house-made pasta that fall off your fork like torn silk, tossed through with soft goat’s cheese, mint oil, thin slices of long red chilli interspersed with tiny leaves of deep fried basil. Or maybe it’ll be orecchiette - little belly button shaped pasta nubs with bits of marron tail, a tiny dice of beef tripe and a few fine sheets of yuba, which is this tofu skin that reminds us of the milk skin off a rice pudding - it’s a slightly disturbing texture.

Have we mentioned Charles Leong is consulting here? The legendary Sydney sommelier (he was behind the once-amazing Aperitif before selling up) is working alongside sommelier Rich Hargreave (last seen working the floor at Bilson’s, which sadly closed its doors last month, just when it was getting good). Together, they’re pouring a bunch of crazy sakes, crisp Teutonic whites and absolutely no non-alcoholic drinks beside water.

On you way back from the bathroom (accessed through the kitchen, it’s filled with tealight candles and tapers sticking out the top of empty sake bottles. A co diner said it looked like a Japanese hippy’s bedroom), take a look in the glass fridges - there’s a rib eye steak that’s been dry-aging for almost a full trimester. On the plate, it’s fatty, feral and slightly obscene. In a good way. It’s also served with a Brodziak knife, which you can wield and pretend you’re Ned Stark in Game of Thrones at the same time.     

The thing about this restaurant is it’s fresh. Every course is like a delicious slap in the face from a perfect quenelle of pistachio gelato with mint and red currant to a blob of malt ice cream arranged over soft and crisp, melt-in-your-mouth meringue topped with ruffled fins of crisp milk skin. It’s rich and sweet, but also savoury. 

Yes, you’re eating in a casino. But the good news is you can enter via Harris Street in Pyrmont, which means there’s no chance of being sucked in by the many buttoned bandits or the jingle jangle of the tables. The Star’s refit means you could potentially forget you were in a casino completely. Chang and Serpico may have left the building for NYC but they’ve left behind some very serious talent in the kitchen, brandishing some very sharp knives. Fine dining isn’t dead, it just got a little more rock’n’roll.

Momofuku Seiobo Soundtrack:

LCD Soundsystem - Someone Great

Beastie Boys - Sabotage

The Notorious B.I.G - Juicy

 The Pixies - Levitate Me

ACDC - Have a Drink on Me

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