Case Cracked! Mark Bittman’s Secret Favorite Restaurant is…

Men Kui Tei. It’s gotta be.  Just as we suspected last week when we posted about the secret Japanese restaurant he had alluded to in a New York Times article.  Some commenters pointed out that Men Kui Tei (on 56th btw. 5+6th) had too many white customers, was too well known, and didn’t have a good enough bowl of ramen to be the place.  But the actual evidence is just too overwhelming.  The formica tables and the word for word menu items he mentioned in the article were enough for us to suspect, but once we spotted this in the back we knew we had our place.  Sure it’s not a “cash register”, but it’s close enough.  Case closed.

15 Comments

  • “It’s gotta be.” =/= case cracked.

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      Zach could be wrong, but the list of midtown ramen places is fairly short, and unless Bittman has really bad taste in ramen, it has to be one of those places (rather than some random Japanese place that happens to have ramen).

  • Nice job! Screw Mark Bittman and his “ha ha, I know a great place but I’m not tellin’ you!” crap.

    • The guy is pompous. I don’t like his recipes, either.

      • I use his cookbook constantly. I don’t find him pompous or a twat at all. He’s excellent at providing simple, useful, tweakable recipes and gives some solid advice.

        This whole episode was pretty stupid, though.

      • I love his recipes and his insights on food. But he has become a pompus jerk in the last couple of years- evidenced by the fact that he believes that one word from him will blow up a fairly generic ramen shop. It won’t.

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    i go there all the time. ill have to look up a picture of this guy. would love to tell him what a pompous twat he is in person.

  • I had a Midtown Lunch with him once at an Indian Buffet on 8th Ave. that is no longer there, and he was nothing but nice and awesome.

  • What forum spam? There’s a good deal on a “stone crusher” and a few tons of “Uranium”.

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    He’s really full of himself if he thinks that a casual remark from him is going to blow that place up. It’s already well-known and consistently busy. And if he thinks *that* place is full of Japanese people, then I guess he’s never been to East Midtown. But I like that place, so at least he has decent taste since it’s my ramen spot.

    • I’d think it’s not so much that he’s mentioning it but more that it’s being mentioned in a paper as popular as the NY Times.

  • Bittman’s cookbook is a decent tome of mostly cribbed simple recipes.

    Every other word published from the douchy windbag … drivel. Another assclown whose minor fame & expanded head resulted in uneducated opinions outside his field of expertise.

    That said, “How to Cook Everything” is also a decent iPad app … which thankfully can be muted

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