Rice Cakes, Rice Rolls, Rice Sweets

The chef and restaurateur JJ Johnson has a saying: “Rice is culture.” I have a saying, too: “Money over everything, rice under everything else.” To me, loving rice is a lifestyle.

Rice was omnipresent in my childhood, and I’m perpetually craving it in my adulthood. I’ve come to love and appreciate so many expressions of rice: tahdig, hashweh, jollof, bariis iskukaris. I thought I had experienced everything this grain had to offer — and then I met glutinous rice and rice flour. Each ingredient is a dream for a person on a lifelong journey to discover all that rice has to offer.

Add-on Tteok That Steal the Show

A few weeks ago, I found myself at Nudibranch, a pop-up-turned-restaurant in the East Village. The three-course menu, featuring gigante beans with octopus, mussels and clams, frog legs shrouded in the flavors of Southeast Asia, is exciting enough. But my eye was immediately drawn to the add-on: country ham with tteok and honey.

Fittingly, I enjoyed those warm and crunchy-tender Korean rice cakes beneath slightly salty ham and a drizzle of floral honey with my colleague Priya Krishna, who first put me on to the rice-cake fundido at Haenyeo in Park Slope, Brooklyn, back in 2019.

The fundido dish at Nudibranch is a nod to tteokbokki, or smothered, stir-fried rice cakes. But, in this case, the bouncy tubes are additionally smothered in Oaxaca cheese, onions, jalapeños and chorizo. It’s a messy affair, and easily one of the most fun dishes you’ll encounter on a fine-dining menu.