Sometimes it all works out

Meredith is here!


(James is here too - but he lives here.) She's been in London at graduate school, so she hasn't appeared much on my blog lately. But this week she's visiting and through some dumb random luck, we ended up with a reservation for four for the Momofuku Fried Chicken dinner (Gwen and I went as well, see?).


Meredith and I have been to Momofuku before (read about it here!) and we liked it well enough. However, last year (just before Meredith went off to London), Momofuku started a fried chicken dinner, which is (in their words) two whole fried chickens, one southern style and one Korean style, mu shu pancakes, long spicy peppers, baby carrots, red ball radishes, shiso leaves, bibb lettuce, four sauces and an herb basket. It cost $100 for the whole thing (not per person) and usually reservations are made up to four weeks in advance (and only online - oy vey). I've been wanting to try it (Serious Eats rated it very highly and I trust them), and the gods must have intervened, because with a minimum of fuss, we ended up at a table (at 5:30pm, but one can't be too picky).

First, just to tempt us apparently, came a bowl of lettuce, carrots and radishes and four different sauces (a pickled jalapeno, a bimbimbap(?), some kind of scallion ginger and hosin sauce).


We eagerly awaited the chicken. And oh good lord, did it deliver.


Yeah, that's a lot of chicken. What? You don't think it's that much? Here it is from a different angle.


Yup, it's a freaking ton of chicken. And it's amazing. The southern style is unbelievably moist. I actually said out loud "how can the insides be so moist and the crust be so crusty?" (Yeah, for reals. Gwen laughed at me). We all dug into the chicken with crazy gusto.


Some people may have said it was the best fried chicken they have ever eaten. Others may have nodded in agreement. If you like Old Bay in fried chicken, this is the place for you (and if you don't, well then, more for me).

The Korean style was equally good. Hot but not overpowering, the flavors were clean and addictive. I had an excellent time making fried chicken tacos that reminded me of Peking Duck except twice as awesome.


The waitress kindly brought us a bowl for our chicken bones, which was practical and funny.


We tried to finish it, but to no avail. My stomach is still full as I type this hours later. However, Zack is reaping the benefits of our stuffed bellies, as he has leftovers in the fridge.


We squeezed in a bit of soft serve - Momofuku is famous for it.


Today's flavors were olive oil and pickled cherry - sounds disgusting but was very refreshing and a nice palate cleanser.

I highly recommend going! Get a reservation and maybe bring more people - or at least bring bigger people and less tiny girls (not that tiny girls don't love fried chicken). And don't eat too much before you go. You'll thank me later.

Noodles and ice cream and pork, oh my

Sometimes a name pops up over and over again until you notice it. It's in the NY Times, you hear it on the street, and finally, your friend Meredith says it in a conversation and you think "huh, I'd like to go there." For me, that name was momofuku.

Momofuku is the "brand name" for Chef David Chang's restaurants. He has a noodle bar, a regular bar and another restaurant. Momofuku means "lucky peach" (apparently) and the noodle bar is the newest addition to the string of restaurants. It's in the East Village on 1st Ave and 11th st.

We ventured over there on Thursday night, a little apprehensive and confused as to why we were going back inside on the first nice day of the year. "Can we go somewhere with a patio?" Katie asked when we invited her to dinner. "No," we replied. "We're going to monofuku noodle bar." Sometimes you just have to stick to your original plan, despite reasonable requests to the contrary. I'm not sure why.

We started off with some carbonated sake. Did you know that they can do that? I sure didn't. It was very good, nice and light and sweet. "It's kind of like an egg cream!" Katie said after taking a sip. Here she is, posing with her drink:


Next, we split the steamed pork buns, which the diners next to us reccomended highly. They were warm and filling.

It was like an Asian pork taco. The sauce and cucumbers were slightly sweet and the pork was delicious!

Katie ordered the grilled octopus salad. I assumed that there would be cut up octopuses, but instead there were whole baby octopuses! I thought that was pretty cool.


They were nicely cooked, not rubbery, like the octopus I've had in the past (side note - if you told me a few years ago that I would be a person who had eaten octopus multiple times, I would have laughed in your face. How things change...). Here's the whole salad.


Unfortunately, the salad was served long before the other main dishes which left us all eating at different times. Not the most horrible thing that could have happened, but kind of annoying nonetheless.

Here's the momofuku ramen that Meredith ordered.

It had pork, an egg, ramen (obviously), scallions and something else that I'm forgetting the name of with pink swirls.

I decided to order the only vegetarian dish on the menu (it was the only noodle dish without broth, and I didn't feel like broth) - ginger scallion noodles with roasted vegetables.


I especially liked the cauliflower. But the real treat came at the end.


That is Cracker Jack and Peanut Butter soft serve ice cream with crushed Butterfingers. "Oh," Meredith said as she took the first bite, "This is what Tasti D lite would taste like if it had fat and sugar in it."

Overall, the food was very good. The service was a little odd though. We were seated under a draft and when we asked to move, they offered us the table that was six inches away from where we were. We decided to stay. At least once, a waitress came and stood right by our table (essentially in our personal space) for a minute and then moved without acknowleding us at all. I think she was just trying to move out of the way of another waiter, but then she lingered and it was weird. Maybe it was an off night, service wise. I would go back again - the food was good and reasonably priced. I'll just cross my fingers for a warmer table.