Momofuku Noodle Bar and Milk Bar

Last night, we had dinner at the Momofuku Noodle Bar and grabbed some desserts from the Milkbar.

I've been waiting since 2007 to try this place.  I've been dying to try the Crack Pie that Anderson Cooper has been raving about.


Well....


Expectations set too high?  I don't know...was good but not great and did not meet the expectations. 


Some things were good, but maybe it's because I am Korean and know the authentic Korean flavors and know my mom's food's flavors.  It wasn't so exotic for me and the flavors were not new.  I don't know but... David, you didn't meet the hype.  Definititly not in the baked goods department which is my love.  






Noodle Bar


They had more vegetarian dishes than I had anticipated. 


Steamed Buns
We had the veggie version with the shitake mushrooms.  The pork version is the one he made famous.  The mushrooms were too salty. There was some cool sweet pickled cucumbers but not sweet enough.


Beet Salad with Cream
This was a hit. It was roasted beets with blood orange, nori nibs, some buttermilk cream sauce.  This was good and beautifully food.  Or as Lucas said...fancy food.

Roasted Cauliflower
This was mediocure at the best for me. Soung seem to like.  Had brown butter, some raisins and pine nuts.


Jar of Kim Chee
This was surprisingly good but didn't have enough cabbage.  It was full of the chili pepper case. I like the jar it came in. 

Ginger Noodle
This is what Soung and I had.  It was more like a noodle salad.  Had some same shitake mushrooms in the steam buns, some greens, seaweed, ginger, and some oil.  Too salty and not that great.  The noodle texture was good though.

Momofuku Noodle
This is the classic pork ramen  with eggs and seaweed.  Lucus and Heather had this and seemed to like it.  I wish they had some veggie version of this.  I wanted a warm bowl of soup like this.  

The wait for the Noodle Bar was about an hour so we decided to hike over to the Milk Bar first and get some sweets.  Here we are after getting our goodies, sitting outside of Milk Bar and just eating desserts before our dinner.  My way of eating!  :)

Milk Bar
I'm not kidding when I said that Anderson Cooper loves this Crack Pie.  He was guest hosting Regis and Kelly and was talking non stop about this.  So, I was expecting something really salty, creamy, but really, it was some condensed milk thin cold pie.   We also got the Compost Cookie which was suppose to be like a cookie with everything but the kitchen sink but it wasn't.  Just some simple choc chip like cookie, very thin.  Not impressive.  We also got this Birthday Cake Truffles, which was good but flat on flavor.  Perhaps I'm being tough but I just expected a lot, prob too much.    The best thing was probaby the Apple Pie Cake that Lucus got but I didn't get to try. 


Crack Pie

Apple Pie Cake

Momfuku has some great concepts and I wanted to love the food but it wasn't.  The place has some good environment but food was flat for me.  Perhaps this is because I'm veggie and you need to have the meat dishes.   I am a dessert lover so did expect to love Milk Bar but it wasn't for me.    I got some great insprirations. 


I do love that he uses many organic ingredients and most are local.  He lists where he sources his vendors as well.


I'm going to make my own version of "crack" pie.  A pie that is so addictive but will be nothing like this gooie buttery stuff.  Mine will have salt, chocolate, and much more!

For You Meat Eaters

There are reasons why I became a vegetarian and the link below is one of them.  :)  

Pigs Head Torchon

There is a blog dedicated to cooking recipes from Momofuku, David Chang's cookbook.  This guy in NYC loves the restaurant so he is working his way cooking through the book.  Very cool!  The site is really good and I love this cookbook even if not as veggie friendly.  However, I could never cook a pig's head, especially with it's eyes looking at me.  You have to be a bad ass and that I'm not when it comes to meat.

Please check out the link but I'm warning you, it's a bit squeamish.  

Momofuku

Photo from Momofuku website

What a glorious afternoon!  I went to David Chang's book signing this afternoon at Microsoft with my friend Michele.  I guess when the uber chefs make the rounds with their book tour, many of them stop at MS campus.  I missed Eric Ripert last spring.  David was my first chance to check out...

He started with an informal speech about how his background and how he came to be where he is now, then Q&A, then signing.   He was very causal, almost an "ah shucks, I have to talk" attitude and seems like no prep at all.  I liked it though.  He was very "rough" around the edges and told it like it is.  He managed to get his "fuck" words in a couple of times.  He is notorious for the f word in his interviews.  I loved every minute of it!  

He was very modest to how successful he has become.  He seems embarassed by the fact he has a restaurant group.  He blamed it all to mistakes and how failure mentality drives what he has built to date.   He says that he works like it will go away at any point,  so you have to just do what drives you.   I liked his story about his first restaurant Momofuku Noodle Bar and how they were a month away from being closed for good so he and his partner said fuck this and started cooking the food they wanted to cook.  Up until that point, they had menu of what they thought people wanted and should be served a noodle shop!   Now his menu at his various restaurants SSam Bar, Ko, Milk Bar, are french and Asian techniques, lots of Korean influences.  Just doing what they love and inspired by, serving high quality food at low prices.   He was raised in "America", classically trained, and in a Korean family so his food seems to be all of these, combined with the "chef" hat and prob influences from his bad ass cooking friends and ideas.  He just makes what he likes combined with a eat local/sustainable mentality.  I actually think some of the Korean Taco truck could have been inspired by him.

I haven't tried his food yet.  Last time I went to New York, it was on the list but we couldn't find it.  :(  It is on my list now for future.  He is not very veggie friendly so I'll prob have to spend most time at Milk bar.

So how can I be such a fan without trying his food.  It's not the awards and the celebrity, and definitely not that he is the "it" chef.  It's his attitude for food, his cooking, life, and his story.  It's great to see a fellow Korean American living the life like me and able to execute what he had, in the way he has.  I admire it but I'm also envious and it inspires to get my but moving.  It inspires me to not worry about the failures that prevents me from getting my stuff out there but also just doing what we like and hoping for someone to like it too.   He is so cool and started so young!  He was pretty cute too!  

His success seems to have taken him away from the day to day and create aspects of food, to more of a reluctant "manager" of people and business.  He talked briefly about his health and how a forced hospitalization gave him the refocus he needed.  He even felt his cookbook was a bit premature with 5 years under his belt.  

Well...I bought his book, he signed it "Good luck with your culinary career".  I hope I can have a culinary career soon.  I'll try some recipe and post. 

Well, we wanted to end the day by going to the Baguette Box but they were closed so we went to Lucky Pho (that's another blog entry) and then had a Freddo at Peets.  

I'm so inspired today, I hope I can bottle this feeling!