Foodie on Duty - Momofuku Milk Bar

Since everyone’s been clamoring on about David Chang’s new Momofuku Bakery & Milk Bar, I decided to take the L and see for myself if this really is the place where diabetic dreams come to dine. Chang just may well be crowned the city’s culinary wunderkind at the moment, but I just see a kid who likes messing around with the common foodie’s expectations.
In general, it’s a touch on the pricey side, so don’t be shocked when you find that you’ve been charged 6 bucks for a milk shake or 4 for a glass of milk. A 10-inch cake can set you back 70 bucks, but it comes at a reasonable $5 per seven-layer slice. On the other hand, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a milk bar that serves up cereal milk that is organic and freshly-squeezed from happy cows. Or a towering pistachio cake made up of 8 layers of lemon curd, milk crumbs and pistachio butter cream. It is for these reasons that I would recommend going with a group of friends and ordering a handful of treats off the menu because, face it, you’ll be sad over what you’re missing out on if you come in there all by yourself and can only cram two or three pastries in your belly.
When I came by, we went for a selection of both the savory and the sweet. The saltier of our treats consisted of pork buns, pork and egg buns and volcano. The pork buns came two to a plate, and were filled with fatty slices of glistening pork belly topped with Korean pickled cucumbers, hoisin sauce and scallions. The ingredients were sandwiched in a baby-soft bao that had been sliced open like a hotdog bun. The bao itself was plushy, feather-light and kissed with sweetness like the best of traditional Chinese buns. The cucumber slices were pickled in rice wine vinegar, sugar and sesame oil, giving a nice vegetal crunch and acidic bite to all that sweet, sticky hoisin sauce. The pork belly was full of melt-in-your-mouth meat, and the garnish of green onions Green onions rounded out the flavor nicely. The pork and egg bun was a bigger, more deluxe repeat performance, only it came replete with a deep fried poached egg that released its golden, unctuous yolk gravy over the whole show. If I were given the opportunity to eat only one more pork pun before I die, it would be the Momofuku Milk Bar’s pork and egg bun, hands down.
I’ve never had a knish before in my life, but I am told that the volcano was modeled after one. All I know is that it was a big, hefty crispy thing as heavy and dense as a hockey puck. The thing oozed potato gratin, melted gruyere cheese and thick, smokey nibbles of juicy bacon. There was also a touch of onion, if I recall correctly. I found it mighty tasty, but since I’m not a huge fan of dense, starchy savory things I was more or less tired of it after two bites. Lovers of shepherd’s pie and potatoes should probably give this one a go.

On the sweeter side, we went with a not-so-classic chocolate cake, candy bar pie and a milkshake. Three thick layers of chocolate cake were frosted together with sticky, marshmallow-y yellow cake icing and fudge. Like I mentioned before, I’m not a fan of chocolate cake, but am compelled to order it time and time again. Lucky for me, old habits paid off, for this is definitely a chocolate cake that satisfies. The cake layers themselves are more dense than fluffy, and exist somewhere between cake and brownie. As a result, it’s more than enough chocolate to satisfy.
The candy bar pie tastes, well, like a candy bar. So a single bite was more than enough to send me into a diabetic coma. There’s a chocolate cookie crust that sits beneath a sugary paste of nougat and toffee. A chocolate shell and a single pretzel make for an eye-catching dessert. Despite the fancy little party of its delightful candy components at the end of the day it tastes like a non-crispety, crunchety Butterfinger bar.

We were about to keel over and die at this point, so we went for samples of the soft-serve ice cream in lieu of full servings. Be sure to ask for a spoon because the samples are huge and are probably a good 2 or 3 times bigger than your average sample. Snickerdoodle, salty pistachio and grapefruit made the cut. The salty pistachio was just a touch saltier than I’d like, but it had a nice, roasted nutty taste that you won’t find at Baskin Robbins. The snickerdoodle was delightfully full of cinnamon, butter and vanilla flavors. Both the snickerdoodle and pistachio were fatty and smooth on the tongue.
The grapefruit was closer to a sorbet and was intense to the point of bitterness. I tried to remedy this by going for broke and ordering up a milkshake made from strawberry milk and grapefruit soft serve. The milk did soften most of the bitterness. It ended up tasting more like a summery fresh strawberry and grapefruit smoothie than a milkshake, but it was a nice way to counteract the candy bar pie joining the rest of the caloric quicksand in my stomach.
Was it pricey? A little. Was it worth the trip? It can be, if you go with 2 or 3 friends and don’t mind writhing on the floor in sugar-shock afterwards.

207 2nd Avenue, corner of 13th and 2nd