Best of New York 2012 • Eating

• Momofuku Ssäm Bar

  207 Second Ave., at 13th St.; 212-254-3500

  David Chang has brought us the bo ssäm, the fried-chicken dinner, and the Beef 7 Ways�all well and good, if you travel in famished carnivorous gangs. When experiencing a more modest hunger, though, there’s no better midday meal than chef Ryan Miller’s duck lunch at Ssäm Bar, a menu just as devoted to a single, unctuous protein, but blessedly offered à la carte. (There is a whole-duck option, of course, that feeds three to six and costs $140.) Options are varied, and include a salt-cured-duck soup, duck-charcuterie sandwich, crispy duck dumplings, and confited-duck buns. The pièce de résistance, however, is the rotisserie duck itself, stuffed with a subcutaneous layer of sausage, carved into succulent slices, and fanned out over a bed of rice. An added bonus: Ssäm Bar by day is comparatively serene. Without the pacing hordes, how do you know you’re in a Chang joint? By the asterisks indicating which duck dishes contain pork�virtually all of them.

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