It didn’t matter that most of these cuisines were already perfect and had no need to operate beyond their existing altitude (and that in many restaurants, beyond the capitols of taste, they didn’t). The point of these exercises in digestive manipulation was to promise the diner something more while delivering, on the plate, an experience at once less satisfying and more expensive than the original. In New York, places like Momofuku, Pok Pok, and Mission Chinese Food were at the vanguard of a new generation of supercharged “ethnic” restaurants. Their success did not, however, represent a victory for the subaltern, or some dramatic turning of the historical-culinary tables, but a recolonization—another way, ultimately, of pining for the past.