New York: Fried Chicken Dinner at Momofuku Noodle Bar

Sandy was hitting Manhattan Sunday night, so we contemplated about whether or not we should head out for our reservation at Momofuku Noodle Bar for the Fried Chicken Dinner.  Eventually we decided to make it to our reservation since we were gonna be stuck indoors for the majority of the next day.  Might as well get the most out of our trip before Sandy shuts everything down! 

The Fried Chicken Dinner is Momofuku Noodle Bar's large format dinner like the Bossam Dinner at Ssam Bar.  They give you a plate of Southern-style fried chicken and Korean fried chicken, and you can make your own wraps or just eat it straight up.  Of course, it is served family style, for 4-8 people, at $100, and you have to make a reservation for it!

Momofuku Noodle Bar

171 1st Ave 

Between 10th St & 11th St

East Village

New York, NY 10003

momofuku.com

Oct 28th dinner menu.

We found out the fried chicken itself is probably not enough food, so Edwin and I decided to get everything on this part of the menu, except for the dried noodles :P

Momofuku's famous Pork Buns, with pork belly, scallions, cucumber, and hoisin sauce.  I posted about it before and mentioned how it is very similar to Taiwanese guabao.

The super fatty and delicious pork belly.

Shrimp Bun.  I didn't try this at Ssam Bar last time.  It's essentially a fried shrimp cake, with spicy mayo, pickled shallots, and iceberg lettuce.

Fried shrimp cake.

I didn't think I'd like it since I don't like mayo-based sauce, but it's actually very good!

Usually there's a 3rd bun on the menu, and they change it up all the time.  That night, they had the Shiitake Bun.

 Fried shiitake, scallions, cucumber, and hoisin sauce.  Very similar to the pork bun, but flavor's totally different.  Crunchy shiitake is great, although a few pieces were overcooked so it was a bit bitter.

The Momofuku Ramen.  Soup base is much lighter versus tonkotsu-based broth.  Ramen noodle is great, but I wasn't too crazy about the soup.  

Pork shoulder and poached egg topping.  Pork shoulder was more like shredded pork.  Kinda got lost in the soup though.  Poached egg was awesome since once broken apart, the yolk slowly immerses itself with the soup.

Pork belly.  Same as the Pork Bun.

Spicy Miso Ramen, with smoked chicken, scallion, and sesame.  This was a big disappointment for Edwin and me.  Couldn't taste much of the smoke flavor from the chicken, and it just wasn't spicy enough.  Not much miso flavor either.

After the ramen, they started to bring out everything for the Fried Chicken Dinner.

Hoisin sauce and gochujang.  Chinese + Korean combo here.

Scallion sauce.  This was probably my favorite from the bossam dinner at Ssam Bar.  Glad to see they provided here too.

Soy sauce dressing with garlic and jalapeno.  A little bit of sweetness too.

Herb basket (basil, mint cilantro) with baby carrots, red ball radishes, shiso leaves, and bibb lettuce.

Mushu wraps.  They provide these so you can make your own wraps.

The fried chicken arrives!  The two types: Southern-style fried chicken & Korean fried chicken.

Southern-style chicken is fried with a buttermilk and old bay batter.  Extremely hard crust.  It was like biting into a shell.  We wanted it to be crunchy, but not break our teeth off..  Seasoning was good though.  Drumstick and smaller pieces were pretty juicy but some of the bigger pieces were really dry.

Korean fried chicken is triple fried and served with a light spicy glaze.  I definitely prefer this over the Southern-style.  The glaze is mouthwatering and goes really well with all the sauces.  Crust is not as hard, more on the crunchy side probably due to a lighter batter?

Making a wrap with the mushu wrap.  Chicken, cilantro, scallion sauce, basil...

I added a bit of the hoisin sauce to give the Southern style a little Asian flavor.  It was the only wrap I made though.  When the wraps got cold, it became extremely chewy and hard to eat, so we didn't eat much of it.

It was a meal we were looking forward to, but I think the hype killed it for us.  We were expecting a lot out of the ramen, but none of it really delivered for us.  We're spoiled with all the ramen spots in California.  The Fried Chicken Dinner sounded awesome, but it was just too good to be true..  I gotta admit though, Momofuku knows how to make some bombass buns.  I would order all 3 that I tried in a heartbeat.  

West LA: Blockheads & Kogi

I bought these Google Offer to Kogi, the food truck, a few months ago, and never got a chance to use it.  Finally made up my mind to head out to Sawtelle, since the Rosita truck was actually gonna be there around 10pm.  Convinced Leonard to go with me so we went after work and ball!

We got there a bit early though so we decided to grab some dessert first at Blockheads!

Blockheads Shavery
11311 Mississippi Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90025
blockheadsla.com

Black sesame + red bean + rice cakes!

Black sesame is probably my favorite flavor at Blockheads.  It tastes just like the black sesame rice cakes!

Red bean is not too sweet and not too mushy.  Perfect with the nutty black sesame.

Leonard's green tea + red bean + walnut. 

After we finished, the truck did arrive with a long line... but dinner time!

Kogi BBQ

All over LA

kogibbq.com

The truck.  Too bad this is their "catering truck" and the guy handling the money was not "trained" to take Google Offers.  Psh... still ordered though.

My Blackjack Quesedilla and 2 tacos!

Seriously my favorite item on Kogi's menu!  Love the salsa verde with the spicy pork.

My short rib & spicy pork tacos.  Spicy pork is still my favorite out of the two haha.

Leonard's Sweet Chili Chicken Quesedilla.  The sweet chili sauce is usually on the calamari tacos but it is used on the chicken quesedilla here.  Kogi's actually taking this off the menu soon.

Calamari taco with the sweet chili sauce.  Another causality of the menu change that will be coming soon.  (Sorry for the blurry pic... hand was all messy from the tacos :P)

Been awhile since I've had Kogi and the tacos are still very tasty.  The Blackjack Quesedilla was a bit mushier than what I remembered or maybe it was because I didn't eat it fast enough?  Glad to try the two items that will be off the menu soon too, but I can see why they are taking it off.  The sweet chili sauce is good but not good enough to want to make me order them over other items.

Since I still didn't use my Google Offer for Kogi, time to hunt down the truck once again!

New York: Momofuku Ssam Bar - Day 3

To end our 3rd day in New York, we had dinner at one of the most popular restaurant in NY, Momofuku Ssam Bar.  I made a reservation weeks ago and only ended up with a 10:30pm slot.  Nevertheless, we prepped ourselves so we can eat to our heart's content and I can honestly say, I've never been this excited for a meal!

So the big thing at Ssam Bar is the Bo Ssam Dinner.  For $200, you get to feast on a 7-10lb pork shoulder that has been slowly oven-roasted for hours!  They say it feeds 5-10 people, but really... you gotta have some big eaters to kill it.  Ssam literally means wrapped in Korean, and it generally refers to food wrapped with lettuce or other greens.  It's a fairly healthy way of eating... until you get a huge piece of pork in front of you.

I will say though, the pictures for this post is absolutely horrible.  After a day's worth of activities and recovering from St. Pat's still, I just didn't want to carry the DSLR with me anymore, so I opted for the Panasonic P&S.  It does well in low-light setting, but blah, miscalculated.  Didn't think it would be THAT dark at the restaurant.

Momofuku Ssam Bar

207 2nd Ave

Between 13th St & 12th St

East Village

New York, NY 10003

momofuku.com

Momofuku Ssam Bar!

Menu.

We started off with some of the famous David Chang's Steamed Bun.  It is essentially a Taiwanese Gua Bao.  Super soft & tender pork belly, with hoisin sauce, cucumber, and scallions.

Awesome awesome awesome pork belly.

Naked Cowgirl Oysters.  Super fresh.


Small, but creamy and delicate.  I'm not a fan of oysters, but these I can eat.

Lettuce bib for the ssam.

Sauce for the pork belly but I didn't really use it.

Finally!  The pork arrives and it was a huuuuuge piece of pork.  Roast a pork shoulder for 6-8 hours with simple brown sugar and kosher salt rub results in this amazing chunk of pork. Most of the flavor is from the pork itself but the crust was great with the sugar all caramelized.


What an awesome color.

Toppings for the pork and for wrapping.

This was the best: Ginger Scallion Sauce.  Exactly what it sounds like.  I think we asked for this to be refilled like 3 times haha.

Of course, gotta have kimchi!

They even provided chopped kimchi!  Think of it as Korean salsa haha.

Ssam sauce or "Korean BBQ sauce" as they called it.  Didn't care too much for this.  Ginger scallion sauce all the way!

Some white rice to curb the pork overload.

My little creation: pork, kimchi, chopped kimchi, some crispy pork skin, ginger scallion sauce, and a piece of the oyster to give it a different dimension!

The pork was very juicy and I did expect a lot of fat but the cut was a good mix!  This was the aftermath... and as you can see we failed at finishing it :P  Probably still a good 2-3 pounds left.

Really though, after about 3-4 wraps, I had to change it up, either with different amount of toppings, difference sauces, with rice, or even just using a different part of the pork! It gets really heavy and towards the end, I just grabbed the bowl of rice and started to eat the pork like a charsu pork rice bowl with some kimchi haha. In the end, the 8 of us only killed about 4-5 lbs out of the 8-pounder that we got. Pretty sad...

Is it worth the $200? Besides the meat sweat, I say yes, especially in a big group. We had a blast and it is such a primal experience, just tearing off the juicy pork and eating with our hands! Next time I will probably just order off the regular menu, but still definitely an experience and am really glad I got to feast on the glorious pig shoulder with 7 of my good friends!