Momofuku Milk Bar & Bakery

[I’m holding back on writing about Kuma Inn after this post…]

The past Saturday, November 15th, I met up with Helen and Dannie to try out as many things as our stomach can handle at Momofuku Milk Bar & Bakery after reading Ed’s preview and seeing a few friends’ photos (they went in early for the Friends & Family preview), I’m salivating at the thought of eating there. So, I proposed to meet up at 11 AM for the sake of avoiding the crowds.

Menu

Despite the fact that it was rainy and early (in terms of the sleepyheads for a Saturday morning), this place was buzzing with activity. There’s a short line of people ordering their food whilst everyone else was spread all over the bakery’s tables that are on the tall side for my short stature. (Hey, I’m 5’3″ what do you expect?)

I’ve joined the line (first round was a ten minute wait, sans Dannie) and saw a whole bunch of these lovelies:

Come to mama…

Since my lack of breakfast and the temptation that’s right in front of my face, I’ve told Helen we’ll split an egg and pork bun and a slice of chocolate chip cake.

The pork bun of awesomeness

I wholeheartedly love Momofuku’s pork buns which consists of two slices of pork belly, wafer thin cucumber slices, hoisin sauce and scallions. But they gilded the lily by adding a deep fried soft poached egg. This is seriously awesome but soo bad for my arteries.

Helen’s not happy

When it comes to our slice of chocolate chip cake, it came in a box (we wanted to stay in) and it was smushed. She would prefer to have her cake photogenic. Awww… [pat pat] But all is not lost since Dannie arrived and we ordered a whole bunch of stuff. An extra stomach who is eager to ingest a ton of sweets is always welcome in my book. (The second round of waiting was about 25 minutes, btw. The line snaked back toward the entrance.)

Salted Pistachio Caramel Sundae (my way)

What we started with was the salted pistachio caramel soft serve with peanut butter halvah and hot fudge sauce. All I could say was “Mmmmm…” The salty kick from the caramel with the hint of pistachio flavor and the dense, silky creaminess of the ice cream made me swoon. The crunchy, sweet-salty factor from the peanut butter halvah was great and the fudge sauce was tasty as well.

Our beverages

To wash some of our food (more like just desserts) down, Dannie and I had our own tristar strawberry milk and Helen wanted a nostalgic drink of hers Lotte’s Let’s Be Mild Coffee. The tristar strawberry milk tasted like a refined version of a strawberry Yoo-hoo drink or any of those commercially produced, flavored dairy drinks. The milk is sweet but not very and the strawberry flavor was intense and especially not artificial.

Helen’s Mild Coffee looked familiar to me when I’m thinking back if I had indeed drank this before, when I took a sip, I remembered I have and I don’t like it as an adult. It reminds me of coffee milk or a not-as-sweet version of the bottled Starbucks Frappuccino. In other words, diluted, milky coffee for my tastebuds. I think you’ve read long enough to know that I love strong espresso and coffee.

Moving on to other sweets:

We originally ordered three slices of cake: the dulce de leche, chocolate, and pistachio. To give you the story in a quasi-short way, we gotten another slice of chocolate chip by accident since it seems like they’ve been confused with the orders. I’ve pointed it out that we have gotten our chocolate chip, they’ve given it to us for gratis. As for the slice of pie you see on the lower right hand corner above, that’s the candy bar pie as a replacement for the pistachio cake I wanted (they ran out somehow and it’s about 12 PM). I think the guys behind the counter knew that my heart was broken and they’ve given us the replacement (the pie) and before I left, they’ve given me a few very warm, yet too soft for them to sell, cornflake-marshmallow, chocolate chip cookies (isn’t that a mouthful to say?). How sweet.

Going back to the cakes that we did ingest, the dulce de leche (photo on top left) was very moist and the crumb was fine and it’s not sweet. I liked the tang of the cream cheese frosting. As for the chocolate cake (top right photo), it was probably the most tame of the bunch we’ve eaten. The chocolate is intense but it’s not terribly sweet (which is a good thing) but nothing really stood out in my mind. The chocolate chip cake (we’ve eaten out from Helen’s slice) was my favorite. I love the passionfruit curd’s flavor that exudes the proper amount of zing on my palate. Finally, the candy bar pie looks like a Snicker’s bar (nougat, chocolate cookie crust and milk chocolate covered, caramel, and peanuts) but in pie form and topped with salted pretzels. This pie was terribly sweet for me but Helen’s on Cloud 9.

As we’ve tried our hardest to eat all of these sweets, we couldn’t. We asked for a box to save up these sweets (I couldn’t bear the thought of throwing them away) and waddled our way around, trying to breathe.

Address:
Momofuku Milk Bar & Bakery
207 2nd Avenue (Entrance on 13th Street)
New York, NY 10003 (map )