Momo-Birthday

In celebration of my 27th year, I secured a reservation at one of the more coveted tables in New York: Momofuku Noodle Bar's Fried Chicken dinner. After a month of anticipation, I finally had the meal I had been hearing so much about since it opened up in 2009.

I love fried chicken in theory, but rarely eat it in practice. First, it is not a nutritionally balanced meal. Second, chicken bones are a real turn off. Third, when fried chicken fails, it fails spectacularly. After months of hearing the food glitterati obsess over this meal, I figured this fried chicken had to be worth it.

And it was. The chicken itself really was amazing. Of the two preparations, the korean version comes triple-fried, perfectly crispy, and coated in a delicious sauce. The Old Bay version initially struck me as a little plain, but as I dressed housemade pancakes with greens and the variety of sauces that arrived at our table, I sort of fell for the Old Bay. It was more a palate for you to design the perfect seasoning for your chicken as opposed to the Korean, which was harder to play around with.

The pieces of chicken seemed to come from some superbird. Orbs of chicken are bursting with white meat that was so tender and so juicy it made me re-think the kind of flavors a chicken can yield. The mammoth plate of chicken that arrived at our table was a formidable foe for myself and my five diners. I regret to say, we were defeated, leaving a few pieces leftover.

We ordered rice cakes and pork buns in addition to the bird, which are standards for Momofuku. Consensus was that the rice cakes are better at noodle bar, and the pork buns superior at Ssam. To top off a great meal, we ventured to Milk Bar (in the delightful late February weather). I opted for the cream cheese frosting and red velvet twist ice cream which restored my faith in the Milk Bar's flavor palate. After a couple months of interesting yet not delicious flavors (e.g. Salt and Pepper), the cream cheese frosting ice cream stopped me dead in my tracks. The texture was airy and it was chilled perfectly. Like the best ice creams that Milk Bar has churned out over the years (cap'n crunch, lucky charms, old-fashioned donut, root beer), it cannot be accurately described in words. You just have to see for yourself...and bring me along too.