“I’ll have what she’s having.” A memorable punch line, but not much of a menu strategy — unless you believe that best-selling qualifies as a cuisine.

And yet I keep seeing the same dishes over and over, often on menus whose identities are defined mostly by popularity: goat cheese salad, a riff on Buffalo chicken wings, Caesar salad, avocado toast, mac and cheese reboots and their upscale cousin, cacio e pepe. Chili crisp on top of everything but dessert.

Chef David Chang single-handedly transformed Brussels sprouts from a sad fall-season also-ran to a year-round star when he opened Momufuku in 2004 in New York City — the addition of bacon and kimchee will do that — and to this day variations on that amped up little cabbage are a menu staple far beyond Chang’s empire. We’ve graduated

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