After an early Valentine's day dinner, my boyfriend and I went to the highly anticipated Momofuku Bakery and Milk Bar. With crazy concoctions like their salty pistachio caramel ice cream, compost cookie (a combination of potato chips, pretzels, butterscotch chips, and chocolate chips), and candy bar pie, Momofuku has generated lots of buzz in the world of adventurous eaters. It has garnered much attention from magazines, blogs, and yes, even Martha.
A little background on this place: Momofuku, meaning "lucky peach," encompasses a triage of restaurants--Noodle bar, Ssam bar, and Ko Bar--all serving up the inventive creations of chef David Chang, with menus changing on a daily basis. The latest addition--the Momofuku Bakery and Milk bar--opened up this past November as an annex to Ssam. Twenty-seven year-old Christina Tosi is the executive pastry chef at all three establishments, and the Milk Bar is now her home-base. (Check out an interview : she won me over with her winter survival tip).
Now, a little background on me and my relationship with baked goods: my lifelong dream is to one day own my own little bakeshop. I proudly boast having a second stomach for desserts, and I truly feel that dark chocolate is one of God’s greatest gifts to man. So naturally, I had to see what this strangely titled establishment was all about.
For those of you who feel the need to justify spending a little dough on high caloric treats, let me allay your fears. Momofuku’s menu is actually reasonably priced for a specialty bake shop: their goodies range from $2-$8. What’s more, the trip is definitely worthwhile because Momofuku offers you more than just sugary confections, they offer you an experience; Right when I walked in the door I knew I was someplace I wanted to be. Rod Stewart’s raspy vocals reverberated off the walls as the scent of warm cinnamon buns wafted up my nose. At 11:30 pm the place showed no signs that it would close in a mere 30 minutes. Hoards of young trendy people congregated around the communal-style wooden tables, and the staff resembled frantic Keebler elves, rushing around with flushed cheeks to fill our orders. The layout of Momofuku is especially cool because the kitchen is open to the dining area, so you can watch the bakers as they work the batter with their burn-marked arms.
So now, on to the food. Being the highly indecisive person that I am, I wanted to try something from every section of the menu, and then some. (I should suggest adding a tasting platter to their menu.) I finally settled on this:
Yup, the candy bar pie. It was a-maz-ing. Sweet and salty, the dense little slice packs in a healthy dose of chocolate, peanut butter, caramel, and toffee bits all neatly enclosed in a cookie crust, topped with a layer of milk chocolate and pretzels. I ate this on a full stomach and I still craved more. Gus opted for the Dulce de Leche cake, a three-layered mammoth of a slice, which I thought was good but kind of dry and much less exciting, and a cup of cereal milk to wash it all down (which, oddly enough, tasted exactly like cereal milk). We also got a compost cookie and a blueberry cream cookie (they were all out of the peanut butter), which we have yet to try.
My tip: Save some money by dining in and make Momofuku Bakery and Milk Bar your destination for the night--you’ll definitely spend less than you would if you went out for dinner or to a bar for a few drinks.
My recommendation: Candy Bar Pie
Next Item to try: Banana cookie
Location: 207 Second Avenue (on 13th St)
Price range: $2-$8
No comments:
Post a Comment