Mission Chinese Food
Danny Bowien is cooking kung pao pastrami again in Manhattan, cured beef in red chile oil under a heap of roasted peanuts, at 45 Mott Street.1
Why go
Bowien started this restaurant as a food cart in San Francisco in 2008 and brought it to Orchard Street in 2012. It moved to East Broadway, opened a second room in Bushwick in 2017, and lost both by 2022.1 He came back in April 2024 as a pop-up inside Cha Kee at 43 Mott Street, cooking with that restaurant's own veteran Chinese cooks. I taught them the recipes over three days, and they got the idea immediately,
he told Sietsema.1 The kitchen now trades two doors along at 45 Mott Street, Tuesday through Sunday.2
Order this / avoid
- Order: the kung pao pastrami, $31 in April 2024, which Sietsema calls
perhaps Bowien's greatest invention.
1 - Order: the Chongqing chicken wings, $19 in April 2024. The rub runs fennel, clove, cumin and star anise.1
- Order: Jacky's spicy Sprite noodles, $16 in April 2024, served cold. Sietsema says the tingle comes mostly from the soda pop, with some sweetness behind it, and it was the lightest thing he ate that day.1
- Avoid: planning a Monday around it. The kitchen's own days run Tuesday through Sunday.2
What locals & experts say
- Robert Sietsema, Eater NY, 22 April 2024, on the wings: they
blasted our palates: They looked the same as previous iterations, dried red chiles scattered here and there, but, if anything, the almost-metallic peppercorn taste and chile heat were more aggressive, and I still tasted cinnamon.
1 - Sietsema on what the room is now:
a return to the basic principles the restaurant started nearly 20 years ago: powerfully flavored and sometimes brilliant Sichuan adaptations incorporated into the canon of Chinese American cuisine.
1
Good to know
- Which door: 45 Mott Street, and it is the only New York room under this name. New owners bought the original San Francisco restaurant and still run it.1
- The prices above came off the April 2024 pop-up menu at 43 Mott, before the move next door.1
Verdict
should-visit — Book it, and put the ma po tofu on the table with the rest. Sietsema found it much the same as it always was, and meatier.