Momofuku Overload Part 1 (food)

The overload part comes from the fried chicken lunch that I went to last week. Full review will be posted as part 2 as soon as I get the pictures. As for this post, it's about the Momofuku empire's newest addition, Ma Peche in the Chambers Hotel in midtown. While the restaurant is not actually open yet, their kitchen is serving a limited menu as well as a lunch special in the mezzanine lounge of the hotel.

Almost EVERY food blogger has gone to try the lunch and blog about it, so I figured I'd join them. That's the effect David Chang has in NYC and over the interwebs. The hotel itself is elegant yet contemporary, with a focus on art. Where I was sitting in the lounge, there was a bookcase with some art books. I flipped through a few pages of a book of the works of Salvador Dali. As for the food, the midtown lunch special offers a choice of 4 dishes (squid salad, rice noodles, banh mi, chicken banh mi) and a drink (can of coke, diet coke, or small bottle of water) for $10+t/t. The lunch is offered from 11am-3pm while the rest of the menu is served from 11am-10pm.


This is the pork and porcini terrine with baguette, pickles, and mustard from the regular menu. Both the bread and the pickled vegetables were perfectly crunchy and offered complementary textures. The terrine was firm and had great flavor, probably the best terrine I've had since the country pate at Inside Park. I would have preferred a grain mustard to the dijon though.


While there will always be someone complaining about authenticity when it comes to something like banh mi, I focus on deliciousness. A Momofuku banh mi makes perfect sense since pork and pickled/fermented vegetables are things that Momofuku is famous for doing well. First, I want to note that this photo is a close-up because I wanted to show the layering of the meat, but there really isn't a lot of food there. As for the sandwich, it is quite extraordinary. The bread is near perfect. Crunchy on the outside with being hard at all, soft on the inside. The pate spread is warm and provides a great temperature contrast with the cooler pickled vegetables. The layers of meat have great flavor and a good texture, although the latter is not as evident since there wasn't a lot of it.

In all, there's some pretty good food there and I would recommend it for a quick stop in that area. I would recommend it for a nice long afternoon tea type of stop except that there's no real view, unless you're really into art books. When the full restaurant finally opens up it should get more interesting.