May 6 (Bloomberg) -- Manhattan's Momofuku Ko serves food and wine on par with America's most celebrated restaurants. Just don't expect anything fancy. This is the East Village, after all.

You take a sedan to Per Se. You ride the subway to Ko.

David Chang, the chef and owner, has a Benihana-hibachi take on luxury. Twelve bar stools and a blond counter surround a tiny open kitchen.

Tasting menu: $85. Wine pairing: $50. Music pairing: Free -- an iPod playlist pumps at reasonable levels. You dine with chopsticks. You feel the heat of the grill. Your waiter is a chef, mine wore a baseball cap.

Amuse bouche No. 1 is a pork rind.

Over three visits, I watched as the chefs cursed, drank coffee, shouted, devoured pie, talked about cars and cursed some more. Some will find it juvenile and unpleasant, but those chefs also happen to cook. And that they do quite well.

This is food you haven't tried before.

Panna cotta isn't made with regular milk but rather cornflake-infused milk. It tastes like a silky, salty breakfast cereal. What's that pink mound of snow? Foie gras that's been frozen and shaved. When the flakes hit your mouth, they melt back into a livery cream -- Chang could get rich selling these out of an ice cream stand.

Want to join the party? Good luck. Reservations are only taken over the Internet. They're released one week in advance at 10 a.m. Seconds later, they're all gone. Many will find this system aggravating. Others will prefer it to phone calls and busy signals.

How Old?

The hallmark of Chang's first two venues -- Momofuku Noodle Bar and Ssam Bar -- was getting 20-somethings to endure hourlong waits for weird raw seafood (uni with whipped tofu), offal (sweetbread popcorn, spicy tripe) and Brussels sprouts (doused in fish sauce).

Ko attracts a young crowd, too, but gives them something more refined, more dictatorial. No written menu. You get 8 to 10 courses, chef's choice. Pick a wine pairing -- then pork fat hits the grill. An English muffin reeks of sweet lard. That's amuse No. 2.

Chang and Peter Serpico, the resident chef, make complicated dishes accessible. The palate is intrigued, not confused. Cool fluke lies in a puddle of tangy whipped buttermilk, spicy sriracha and toasted poppy seeds. No flavor overwhelms another.

Thank Cory Lane for fine beverage pairings.

How about Allagash White Ale with diver scallops? The lemony beer mimicked a citrus vinaigrette in the dish, then quelled the smokiness of a bacon puree. Those scallops, by the way, had a beautiful, buttery char. They were posing as toasted marshmallows.

Liquid Spring

Pea soup? The verdant pool surrounds an earthy cannelloni of black trumpet mushrooms, a small mound of briny butter-poached lobster. The heady flavors are carried by the gentle sting of a dry sake.

Every try sparkling Banyuls? Probably not -- the French don't carbonate the dessert wine, Ko does. Bubbles aerate the raisiny potion. The transformed product is like a gourmet, alcoholic Dr. Pepper.

If this all sounds too flip, other dishes exhibit sublime austerity; a slice of buttered white asparagus is squirted with lemon, topped with bitter mountain caviar; it's the king of vegetables in a polka-dot Speedo.

Sliced beef is pink within, charred on the outside. Is it a strip steak? No. It disintegrates in your mouth. Aha! Kobe? Wrong again. They're short ribs. Cooked in a water bath for two days at a temperature so low they're still medium. For that crispy crust they're deep fried.

Garcon!

The chefs explain every ingredient. They pace the meal perfectly -- it lasts about two hours. One of the cooks saw me cupping a glass of white wine (it was too cold). Result: no more chilly drinks.

Bringing a guest? Your friend's menu can differ from yours. Instead of fluke, you might get hamachi with pickled grapes and soy dust (tastes better than it sounds), or raw shrimp with frozen avocado shavings (sounds better than it tastes).

No petit fours here. Deep-fried apple pie looks like the McDonald's handheld dessert. Except there's less grease, more apple and no vanilla soft serve on the side. You get salty ``toasted'' miso paste and sour cream ice cream. The net effect is a bracing, palate cleansing finish.

Still, the chefs' jocular antics, the wooden seats, the rock music or the heat from the grill are really idiosyncrasies more fit for a truck-stop diner. So while Ko might be one of America's great restaurants, it's not quite a four-star restaurant.

The Bloomberg Questions

Cost? Set menu at $85. Wine pairings at $50, $85, $150.

Sound level? Medium. Patrons are quiet, chefs are not.

Date place? No. The food deserves your undivided attention.

Inside tip? Reservations for one are the easiest.

Special feature? The chef trash-talking.

Private room? Only if you count the restroom.

Will I be back? Often.

Momofuku Ko is at 163 First Ave., between 10th and 11th streets. Information: http://www.momofuku.com.

Rating: ***

What the Stars Mean
****         Incomparable food, service, ambience.
***          First-class of its kind.
**           Good, reliable.
*            Fair
No stars     Poor.

(Ryan Sutton writes about New York restaurants for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this review: Ryan Sutton in New York at rsutton1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 6, 2008 00:01 EDT