Chilly Sprite noodles with chile oil on the new Mission Chinese language pop-up.
Picture: Grub Avenue
Does time heal? The final we heard of Danny Bowien’s Mission Chinese language, all was not nicely. Its East Broadway and Bushwick areas closed in 2020 and 2022, below the shadow of stories that the office had been a “nightmare.” (A San Francisco location continues to be open, however Bowien has no involvement with it.) Bowien appeared to have moved on. Currently, he’s been taping Chopped and turning up in Supreme campaigns.
Lengthy earlier than I pulled on the restaurant critic’s plastic bib, I ate at Mission’s outdated New York areas (directly in San Francisco) — first with pleasure, ultimately with exhaustion. By the point of Bushwick, Mission appeared extra rave than restaurant: Neon lights bouncing across the room, karaoke blasting at deafening ranges. Possibly I aged out, or perhaps Mission hadn’t grown up. Both manner, these visits dropped off.
After which, this summer time, Mission got here again: quietly (kind of), quickly (perhaps). Wednesday via Sunday evenings till July 31, Mission is popping up at Cha Kee on Mott Avenue, cooking primarily its classics. Bowien is again within the kitchen each evening, along with his chef Patty Lee and the Cha Kee workers, who received a crash course in Mission’s ethos and cooking. Cha Kee does its personal factor for breakfast and lunch service and goes Mission within the evenings. One among Bowien’s favourite light-up Chinese language takeaway photo-menu signal boards now glows from the again wall, however aside from that, the restaurant appears to be like a lot because it often does.
Once I went again to Mission Kee (if I could), I discovered I’d missed it, and we each appeared higher met for the time aside. On a latest Friday evening, the room was full and buzzing. A birthday dinner, a pair of Bear-ish grizzled beard guys, sizzling women: social má là, however of a calmer, extra targeted variety. The drinks listing that used to gas the social gathering has been principally pared again to some batched cocktails and Tsingtaos. The dishes that used to outline Mission are again — the chongqing wings, the kung pao pastrami — like Bushwick-chastened authors of “Why I Left New York” essays returned for a penitent go to. And like these authors, it’s good to see them once more. These have been nice concepts, nice dishes, potent ones, they usually blasted their manner onto the scene to burn sizzling and quick. A Chinatown-residing good friend — 6-foot-plus, Alaska born, a former forest firefighter — who had frequented the East Broadway location remembered that on one go to, the wings have been so spicy he received a nosebleed.
Right here they’re joined by a pair enjoyable new ones. Jacky’s Sprite noodles strike me as basic Mission: ballsy, irresistibly dangerous for you. Jacky, one among Mission’s hosts, is a giant booster of Haidilao in Flushing (a China-based chain, home of the dancing noodle), the place chilly noodles are made with Korean cider. Right here, the “effervescent dressing” is dosed with Sprite, which supplies the chilly, chile-oil slicked noodles a little bit tingle. I discovered them to be overly candy, however how are you not going to attempt a Sprite noodle? Go forward, and whilst you’re at it, get the brand new crispy beef “Louis,” braised for 4 hours after which completed in an umami-deep candy soy caramel and Sicilian orange oil, or the returning cumin lamb ribs, punched up with dates. I apprehensive for the vegetarian amongst us, however she agreed with the menu (how usually does that occur?) that the “addictive cabbage salad” was, actually, addictive, no matter was in its “seaweed secret dressing,” and the shiso fried rice buried beneath a mountain of shredded shiso mainly off-gassed sufficient herbaceousness to really feel substantial.
Will Mission come again for a extra everlasting keep? As of now, it’s unsure. Cha Kee’s house owners have invited Bowien to do one other run. “After I closed the final Mission Chinese language Meals, I assumed it might by no means come again once more,” he advised me by electronic mail. “I’m glad it has, and I’m not ruling something out at this level. I really feel very privileged to be cooking within the metropolis once more, and I undoubtedly don’t take it with no consideration.”
For now, it’s good to have it on the town on a go to. A bit older, a little bit — hopefully — wiser, a little bit calmer, certain. However not toothless. I introduced the forest firefighter again, and we dug right into a dish of rice desserts with thrice-fried bacon, poppy with Sichuan peppercorn and yuba. His eyes bulged. “That’s a nosebleeder,” he stated.