Things I ate in New York, a Catalogue Continued

Momofuku Milk Bar: David Chang's most recent addition to his East Village empire, Momofuku Milk Bar features all the desserts served at his restaurants, created by Christina Tosi. Miss Tosi's creations are delectable to the extreme. They soundly reintroduce basic desserts and incorporate a combination of homey tastes and treats with an exotic new flavor. This is their menu:
I particularly enjoyed the Banana Green Curry bread, which I slice and heat for breakfast. It's a light banana bread that isn't particularly sweet, but has tons of dimension in flavor. Mixed within the banana is the green curry that adds complexity in it's spiciness. Then, I discovered these:

For $4.50, I purchased three cookies. The chocolate-chocolate, the compost cookie, and the cornflake-marshmellow-chocolate chip cookie. The most obviously delicious cookie was the cornflake-marshmellow-chocolate chip cookie. Completely sweet, the cornflake gave the cookie an additional crunch, the marshmellow provided a strong sweetness and the chocolates were quality.

I was the most wary of the compost cookie, which sounds a lot like trash. The sweet girl behind the counter explained enthusiastically that it was a conglomeration of potato chips, pretzels, coffee grounds, oats, graham-cracker crumbs and chocolate and butterscotch chips, which sounded disgusting and amazing all at once. After biting into, I realized that I had never tasted a cookie so interesting. It kind of tasted like a huge meal. Salty and sweet, but neither in particular, it starts off sweet, but ends savory, much like a potato chip.

The chocolate-chocolate cookie is one that must be savored. I started eating it quickly at a Starbuck's store, which did it much of a disservice. This chocolate-chocolate was deep. It's something you eat alone, savoring slowly! Like biting into a deep dish chocolate brownie cookie, you can taste the chocolate morsels in each bite, the chemistry of the cookie a fullbodied creation that has a salty edge to make you appreciate the chocolate taste even more. How much more poetic can I be about these?

This is a photo of the pies. There is a Crack Pie. I wanted to taste, but it was physically impossible.

A sample of the Old-Fashioned Donut soft serve was actually what I was most looking forward to. They used to have Cereal Milk soft serve. I was hoping for some sort of frozen Krispy Kreme but instead, this soft serve is a little too complicated for my palate. Derivated from an actual cake mix, the after taste is exactly like a donut, but the taste is too salty for me. A sample is all I could consume.

After a long walk into the East Village, into Washington Park, only to realize that the izakaya that I had wanted to go to was definitely not open until nighttime, my friend and I arrived at Setagaya Ramen in St. Mark's. Hello, yummy-lish.


For dinner, I went to Oh! Taisho where I had a sample of the okonomiyaki. Wiki states the okonomiyaki as:

"Okonomiyaki (お好み焼き ^?) is a Japanese savoury pancake containing a variety of ingredients. The name is derived from the word okonomi, meaning "what you like" or "what you want", and yaki meaning "grilled" or "cooked" (cf. yakitori and yakisoba). Okonomiyaki is mainly associated with Kansai or Hiroshima areas of Japan, but is widely available throughout the country. Toppings and batters tend to vary according to region......The batter is made of flour, grated yam, water or dashi, eggs and shredded cabbage, and usually contains other ingredients such as green onion, meat (generally pork or bacon), octopus, squid, shrimp, vegetables, kimchi, mochi or cheese. Okonomiyaki is sometimes compared to an omelette or a pancake and may be referred to as "a Japanese pancake", or even "Osaka soul food"^[1]."

Needless to say, it is something that I didn't know that I was missing and have been craving ever since. Please expect a blog where I strive to create my own okonomiyaki!

The next day, we stopped at Le Pain Quotiedien where I had an egg salad tartine that was beautiful and delicious but I was too engrossed and sad that I was leaving NYC to take a photo. NYC food, I loves you!