Food fun in the raw: Let’s welcome MOSU
Just-opened Asian BBQ, hot pot affair too good not to be supported
MOSU Asian BBQ & Hot Pot finally opened on Wolf Road in November nested in the arcade side of former Wolf’s 1-11. Toro Cantina, faster out of the gate, occupies the other half. MOSU is properly three restaurants in one since you must commit to hot pot, barbecue or a bar menu of Asian street food when making reservations, and your choice decides where you’ll sit. A weekend brunch switches bar offerings from soup dumplings and salt-and-pepper calamari to crusty banh mi sandwiches gaping with pork and cilantro and raging bimimbap rice bowls brought to the table audibly sizzling. The rice at the bottom is as crispy and gold as that in the preparation of Persian tahdig.
The owners are both engineers. Lily Tang, a native of Troy who attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and her husband, Khalil Shabib, share that they “nerded out” in the design phase over the industrial equipment and complexities of installing the hidden infrastructure for hot pot tables imported from China and gasfired charcoal Asian barbecue tables brought from Japan.
Built-in exhaust systems at barbecue tables add value in the era of COVID by providing ten times the normal air exchange. Tables are immovable, and at 50% occupancy only every other one is in use, putting your nearest diners well over ten feet away. We pine for the hubbub of pre-coVID days, but small groups and families fill booths, happily laying pink beef in raw strips on the gold domes of tabletop grills.
Toro borrowed the same Chicago design firm and shares style elements, but nothing prepares you for the power-pop yellow-and-red mural of a kimono-clad geisha behind the centralized bar and her reflection in a mirror-image tile mosaic wrapped beneath. Tang’s brother, a digital artist, is behind the design. Last summer, we pressed noses against the huge floor-to-ceiling windows visible from Wolf Road to watch its progress, while following the owners’ Asian travels in social media posts.
Tang’s family has been in the restaurant industry for 30 years and MOSU has evident backing. The result is glamorous and bold. Ceiling curves traced in lengths of
suspended thick rope; wood, floral print and sprigs of greenery uplit in rows skew modernist and Asian. It’s beautiful, but they note the $1.5 million interior renovation might have been cheaper built from scratch.
Just as relevant is the technology behind an ipad ordering system that lets you select and submit your choice of drinks, hot pot broths, meats and vegetables by touch screen. The order is submitted to your server and the kitchen. Small plates rush out moments later: Smashed cucumbers tangy in soy and sambal oelek, Taiwanese salt-and-pepper chicken in crunchy little nuggets, chewy pan-fried pork dumplings in smiling crescents, steaming miso broth, a trio of salty sambal and ssamjang dipping sauces.
A server pours a steady stream of creamy, white broth -- its whiteness from fats and collagen milked from bones over a 12-hour boil -- from a brass kettle into our hot pot. The sunken tray is divided, yin yang-style, into two curved halves. One side, dolloped with a fiery Sichuan pepper paste, stains the broth a vivid oxblood red; the plain bone broth a mild antidote when the Sichuan peppers numb our tongues. Due to one guest’s shellfish allergy, we have a small bowl with spicy tom yum broth into which we can freely plop soft raw shrimp paste from a scoop.
For beginners, the ipad is there to guide with cooking times. We lower in slippery raw fish and enoki mushrooms in lanky bunches, glossy octopus and sticky rice cakes, fried fish balls and tofu skins that enter like stiff poppadums and yield into delicious soft cloths in the roiling boil. Next time I’ll add honeycomb tripe and quail eggs.
Just as fast are cocktails from the bar: The Cure, my favorite for mixing Lapsang Souchong tea
with scotch, raw honey, lemon and crystallized ginger. But there’s The Lily, pairing Albany Distilling vodka with Calpico and orange blossom, a Bangkok Gimlet boosted by Thai basil, a Chrysanthemum and Singapore Sling. We’re grateful for cocktails more balanced than usual on Wolf
Road. And we don’t overlook a page of sake and dangerously sippable Korean soju that tastes like water with Jolly Rancher fruitiness. (I’ll say it again: Be smart and take an Uber or Falcon Club car home.)
Tang is modest when I ask who heads the kitchen. “There’s not a lot of cooking given so much is raw, fresh prep.” But there are meticulous details: The sliced beef brought to the hot pot in a scaffold of rolls stiffened by marbled fat are far thinner than the slices for the barbecue where you can choose between ribeye, filet mignon and flank, and sear fragrant cumin lamb chops or marinated miso chicken thighs.
Tang is the engineer of MOSU’S recipes -- sampled and deconstructed on travels across China, Japan, Indonesia and Thailand -though the broths, bimimbap, Korean shrimp pa-jeon pancakes, and salt-and-pepper dishes that signal Taiwanese. While Tang is in the kitchen nightly, Shabib is front of house in tailored style interacting with guests and assisting trainee staff. They’ve now added a veteran Japanese chef to the team. Perhaps he is responsible for the shellacked crème brulee we demolish with matcha and mango ice cream.
Though you can go à la carte, a $50 “all you care to eat” is the obvious deal. Take note: It’s not a gluttonous all-you-can-order bottomless cup. Excess food waste earns an à la carte charge.
With so much going right, fur
ther capacity restrictions or the threat of another shutdown weigh heavily. Neither hot pot nor BBQ lend themselves to takeout, so the couple is at work on noodle bowls and meal kits to supplement the street food menu, with boozy bubble teas and cocktails-to-go.
At the risk of whimpering into my takeout, make a point to go while you can. Few places offer such socially distanced dining, high-tech ventilation, and close-to-contactless service in a stunning yet casual interior. Go ahead and brunch in your cozy weekend sweats. It’s more hip than fancy. Joining Toro Cantina and Kuma Ani, MOSU is just another reason to check your attitude about dining on Wolf Road.