At my first meal at Momofuku Ssäm, one particular dish slapped me upside the head and suggested that, indeed, something really special was going on here. It was a riff on a classic French salad of frisée aux lardons: a respectful version of the bistro staple—smallish, garnished with puffy fried chicharrones of pork skin instead of the usual bacon, and topped with a wonderfully runny, perfectly poached quail egg. Good enough—and, so far, not something that would inspire me to tear off my shirt and go running out in the street proselytizing. But the salad sat on top of a wildly incongruous stew of spicy, Korean-style tripe—and it was, well, it was…genius. Here, on one hand, was everything I usually hate about modern cooking—and in one bowl, no less. It was “fusion”—in the sense that it combined a perfectly good European classic with Asian ingredients and preparation. It was post-modern and contained my least favorite ingredient these days: irony. It appeared to be trying to “improve” or riff on an “unimprovable” and perfectly good bistro icon. Unless you’re Thomas Keller, or Ferran Adrià, I usually loathe that kind of thing.

But this was truly audacious. It was fucking delicious. And it had tripe in it. So, for me, there was a moral dimension as well: anyone who can make something irresistibly delicious with tripe and get New Yorkers to eat it is, to my mind, already on the side of the angels. It was as if all my favorite chefs had gotten together and somehow created a perfectly tuned, super mutant baby food—in Korea. I felt I wanted all my high-end meals—for the rest of my life—to resemble this one: both complex and strangely comforting.

From the outside, Momofuku Ko looks like an after-hours club—or a particularly dodgy storefront cocktail lounge. There’s no sign—only Chang’s tiny, trademark peach logo next to an uninviting door. You could easily stand outside looking for it for ten minutes before realizing you were there all along.

Reservations for the twelve seats at the rather spartan-looking bar are legendarily difficult to get—in that the process is the most truly (and painfully) democratic in the world of fine dining. You can’t call or write or beg or network your way into Ko. You log on to their Web site at precisely the right second and manage, you hope, against all odds, to get in your request for a reservation for exactly six days ahead. You do this only by beating out the thousands of other people who are doing exactly the same thing you are—at exactly the same second—not an easy feat. You get a seat at Ko only over time and through persistent effort. Beyond hiring a platoon of helpers to log on at the same time and attempt, simultaneously, to make reservations on your behalf—which might increase your chances—there is no gaming the system. It’s a lottery. The same rules apply for all: food critics, friends—even Chang’s parents. They had to wait a year to eat at their own son’s restaurant.

The menu at Ko—a set menu of ten courses for dinner (and sixteen for lunch)—changes with the lineup, and the chefs’ and cooks’ moods, though it usually includes one of a number of takes on concepts that have already been tried, tested, and found to work. The creative process leading up to each finished dish is mysterious and ill-understood. The natural inclination of lazy journalists is, of course, to credit Chang exclusively—which only (and unfairly) invites disappointment when one realizes he’s rarely present. As was intended from its inception, Peter Serpico is the chef at Ko—and that’s whom you’re likely to find there.

The creative process by which the final dishes at Chang restaurants are arrived at is an absolutely fascinating stream of daily e-mails between chefs and cooks. Preceded and followed by many, many testings and tastings. Five-word rockets detailing a sudden flash of inspiration, thousand-word missives detailing an experience, a flavor, a possibility—an experiment that might lead to something great, continuing back and forth. The hard drive on Chang’s laptop—from what transcripts I’ve seen—contains a years-long conversation with some of the most exciting and creative minds in gastronomy. And it’s not just employees weighing in. Somewhere in the ether is a record of some seriously deep fucking thinking about food. Something I’d suggest, by the way, that the Culinary Institute of America make a bid on now—for their archives.

Service at Ko is informal for a restaurant with two Michelin stars. There are no waiters. The cooks prepare the dishes and, after describing what you’re about to eat—with varying degrees of either casual good cheer or perfunctory (if charming) indifference—they put the plate in front of you on the counter. Though there is a wine list, it is advisable to allow the excellent sommelier to pour pairings with each course. She knows better than you. But if you just want beer with your dinner? They’ve got that, too.

There are no tablecloths or place settings, per se. The musical accompaniment to your meal is likely to be The Stooges or The Velvet Underground. The “open kitchen” looks more like a short-order setup than a Michelin-starred restaurant. And the cooks…they look gloriously like cooks. The kind they used to hide in the back when company came calling. Scruffy, tattooed, and wearing the same snap-front white shirts you see on the guys behind the counter at a Greek diner.

I was finally, after many tries, lucky enough to get into Ko.

There was a tiny plate of oyster, caviar, and sea urchin to start, three ingredients born to be together—followed by a dish of braised eggplant, tomato-water gel, and eggplant chip, a combination I’d hardly been dreaming of all my life (in fact, three ingredients I thought I could happily do without). Intensely, wonderfully flavorful—the kind of happy surprise I seldom expect from a vegetable. There was a dish of tofu and duck heart in homemade XO sauce, which fell more predictably into the territory of things I love; a “chicharrone/pork fat brioche” was a mercifully small portion of tasty, tasty overkill (and basically evil—in a good way). I pretty much hate scallops (too rich and too sweet for me). And I’m indifferent to pineapple (also sweet). But sliced diver scallops with pineapple vinegar, dehydrated ham, and fresh water chestnut was yet another dish I should have hated but ended up wanting to tongue the plate. There was another uni dish—this one in chilled “burned” dashi with pea tendrils and melon—which was simply brilliant. Then came a lightly smoked chicken egg with fingerling-potato chips, onion soubise, and sweet-potato vinegar—which tasted like something you’d only be lucky enough to discover if you were getting stoned late at night with Ferran Adrià—and you both found yourselves with the munchies. Corn pasta with chorizo, pickled tomato, dried chile, sour cream, and lime. Caper-brined trout with potato risotto, dill powder, glazed red-ball radish, and baby Swiss chard must have been the end of a very long and probably painful process. Also awesome…A frozen, freshly fallen snow of foie gras with lychee, pine nut brittle, and riesling gelée, if you close your eyes and imagine it, already makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? By the time the lighter-than-air duck liver melted on my tongue, it was already an answered prayer. Deep-fried shortribs (I ask you: Who the fuck wouldn’t love that?) with scallion, lavender, and baby leek finished me off with savory. Then desserts: peach soda with animal-cracker ice cream, which I didn’t love so much, maybe because I have no happy childhood associations with either ingredient. Cruelly, I wasn’t allowed to drink soda at my house (a fact about which I am still bitter), and animal crackers were, for me, a default sort of a cookie—the kind of thing somebody’s addled grandma would give you, thinking that they were just what every kid loved best. The loathsome-sounding black-pepper ganache, black-pepper crumbs, macerated blueberries with crème fraîche, and olive-oil ice cream was, typically of my Momofuku-related experiences, a shockingly unexpected joy. In fact, it was one of the most memorable dishes of the night—in a night full of them.