Listen as you look.
Benny remembers arriving soon after the Orchard Street restaurant opened—and the meal that made the room impossible to forget.
August 5, 2012 · Lower East Side, New York City
The doors had barely opened.
Benny was already at the table.
One meal, preserved.
Twenty-two original photographs move from the room to the table, then behind the glass into the kitchen.
Red light. Dragons overhead.
Heat, salt, smoke, surprise.
The kitchen in motion.
Read Benny’s original narration.
Open transcript
These photos are of the famous—well, at the time—Mission Chinese Food, which was Danny Bowien’s restaurant.
He started as a pop-up from Lung Shan, I think it was, in San Francisco, and he brought it to New York City. The first one opened on Orchard Street in the Lower East Side in 2012, and as soon as it opened, I was there.
These photos are from, I think, the first or second week it was open. I fell in love with it. The food was mind-blowing. I’d never had anything like it in my life, and Danny Bowien has the great Anthony Bourdain to thank for that, because without Anthony Bourdain I would have never known about it. The world probably would have never known about it like they ended up knowing.
But what a great place. You can see some of the dishes there—the pastrami, kung pao, and all sorts of mixed-up stuff that you wouldn’t think about putting together just made sense.
The mapo tofu was my favorite dish: fiery, spicy Sichuan peppers, salt level like that of an evaporated sea—but it seemed to work—and just a really cool vibe all the way around.
So this place is long gone. Danny’s, like, shut them all down. I don’t know what he’s doing now, but he swooped in and lit a fire under the culinary world in New York for a while. I’m certainly glad I had a chance to be part of it, and sample it, and enjoy it.
Preserved as recorded.
- Date photographed
- August 5, 2012
- Location
- Orchard Street, Lower East Side, New York City
- Photographic record
- 22 original JPEG photographs · 2592 × 1936
- Original filenames
- IMG_2135.JPG–IMG_2156.JPG
- Spoken record
- mission.mp3 · 1 minute 35 seconds · mono
- Preservation note
- Original JPEG and MP3 files remain unchanged. This exhibit uses optimized presentation copies.