Revisiting Momofuku Noodle Bar

Momofuku Noodle Bar

To celebrate my brother's birthday, we decided on Momofuku Noodle Bar because of its young and festive atmosphere.  A cousin from Manila, Kuya A., was also visiting with us, which is always a good excuse for eating out. 

Despite it being only a Wednesday night, it was quite a wait for us since we had a rather big group.  We popped by a cozy bar right across the street for a drink before our party was complete.  And so finally we did get called and it was time for some good eatin'.

Kuya A. and DJKung decided on the tasting menu, while the rest of us went for a la carte.  What follows is a mish-mash of what we had.

This was the first item on the tasting menu.  (Side note: We did not take good notes of what we had this night, unfortunately.  I know that this excuse was quite lame, but we actually had been imbibing in quite a few drinks since early that evening, and continued to do so the rest of the night.) I'm going to decide that this was a little pickle something to wake up your palate.

I think that one of the reasons why the Momofuku brand became popular is because of the quality of the ingredients that they use.  The pork here tastes really porky, and I believe that they do use the the heirloom-type breeds of pigs raised in happy 100%-natural farms and all that.  Further, this is one of the places where they do fusion food right; the kitchen has a good feel of what flavors and textures and techniques go well together. 

Pork steamed buns app.  This is a sandwich version of siopao, or Chinese meat buns. These were quickly scarfed up.

This is the second item on the tasting menu.  Can you hazard a guess?  I distinctly recall that the red pastes at11 o'clock and 3'oclock were fruit-based. 

Here's one of the side dishes that we ordered.  I looked at the menu listed on the website, and cannot say for certain whether these were the Tokyo turnips.  I do recall that these were a little crunchy and simply delicious.

Smoked chicken wings.  DJKung especially liked these.

Halfway down the Momofuku ramen bowl.  The ramen broth here is quite tasty.

Chilled spicy noodles.  This is a play on the Korean style cold noodles with pepper sauce. This is topped with cucumber, half of a soft boiled egg and some toasted nori strips. Among the noodles were crunchy-salty-sweet nuggets of fried cashew nuts, which were awesome.

 Instead of the sweet-spicy red pepper sauce, the noodles are bathed in an intriguing spicy, porky and silky dressing.  Yet remarkably despite all its porkiness, it did not have a greasy feel at all.

Third item on the tasting menu was the beef ragu with pasta.  DJKung remarked at how gamy (in a good way) the beef was. 

Maple syrup ice cream.  This was very creamy and salty at the same time, which was a kick-ass combination.  It was too bad that we were all quite full by then and could not finish this.

Momofuku Noodle Bar

Under food:



Momofuku Noodle Bar
East Village, New York



We had fun checking out Momofuku Ssam Bar some time ago, so we were game to try the sister restaurant, Momofuku Noodle Bar. The prices on the menu for MNB looked more reasonable.



We started off with some beer, chips and chicken wings.

Left: Ginka Kogen (Japan); middle: Lagunitas Censored Ale (California); right: seven spice potato chips. I really liked the Lagunitas ale. It had a very well-rounded, balanced flavor that went well with the food. DJKung said the same about his beer, although I detected a hint of bubble gum to it. (Be forewarned that the Ginka beer is $14!).

The potato chips were excellent. The spice blend was just right. The chips were cut rather coarsely, so they were nice and crispy.

Smoked chicken wings. DJKung liked this a lot, and in fact did not save some for Chibs. I tried the sauce and it was sweet, lots of little chili pieces; you could taste the smoke (hickory?) that went into it. DJKung said that this was falling-off-the-bone tender.

DJKung espied the tasting menu (four courses), so there went the budget. What's nice about their tasting menu is that each course has two options.

Tasting menu course #1: hamachi sashimi with carrot and celery puree. There were crunchy bits sprinkled all around; perhaps sea salt. The fish was fresh and yummy. We're of two minds about this; on one hand, good fish does not need anything else other than maybe a dab of wasabi. On the other, the play of textures and flavors was rather nice.





Course #2: Oxtail ragu. The noodles (garliani?) were thin sqaure strips of pasta rolled on it diagonal, rather chewy. This dish was gamy; DJKung felt that the beef was full of flavor.

I ordered the chicken ramen.

Chicken ramen. The chicken bits looked like they were broiled. The broth was pretty good.

Third course: broiled mackerel. I think we were expecting a whole fish, instead of just fillets, so we were disappointed. The fish did not taste fresh, but more like it was picked up from somewhere else and flown here. The sauce, a black olive puree, was excellent. So did the pieces of sweet fruity blood orange, pickles and the crunchy/chewy anise-flavored garbanzos. DJKung felt that the flavors were better individually and did not really gel well together.

Fourth course: quince and maple syrup ice cream, with crushed nuts and sugar crunch on top. This was excellent---salty, creamy, sweet and fruity.

Overall, we had a great time enjoying the food and the place. The restaurant was quite empty when we arrived around 6pm. It was quite nice just munching on our chips and admiring all that handsome blonde wood. Later on, it got pretty packed. Table-sharing seemed to be the norm here.