Momofuku Milk Bar

Last night was one of these deeply New York food nights, with the usual caveat that everything didn't go right. I left my firm at about 6:00 for Russ & Daughters to get some Gaspe Nova, and unfortunately got out at Broadway-Lafayette Street instead of Lower East Side station, and thus arrived at Russ precisely when they were locking up. I made the shape of smoked salmon with my hands through the window, but no luck. Annoyed, I walked ten blocks up first avenue to Momofuku Noodle Bar, on the theory that I might get a bite to eat, and then visit the new Milk Bar for a dessert to take home. The two problems with that plan were that Noodle Bar was packed, and Milk Bar is behind Ssam Bar (which is an avenue and two blocks away on 13th and Second), not Noodle Bar. So I walked to Ssam bar and went into the bakery to get one of the deep fried egg pork buns. Of course, they stop serving savories at 5:00 pm. Instead, I had a pistachio cake as dinner, wolfing it down at the standing table in the bakery itself, and took a banana cake home to share. Then I walked across to 20th and between 5th and Park, where I picked up 5 bottles of wine (4 Becco Rosso, and a German Sylvaner) at Moore Brothers for Christmas, before grabbing the train home. Exhausted, obviously.

Now to substance. Before anything else, let me make clear that I have the same complaint about Milk Bar as everyone else. The service is truly appalling. There were only three of us in line, and my cake took about 12 minutes to slice. It's not even an organizational matter, which might be excusable. Rather, the particular guy charged with slicing my cake was so excruciatingly slow that I felt like jumping over the counter and doing it myself, and despite the glacial speed, he still gave me the wrong order.

As for the cake, the Banana Cake is delicious, though nothing I would pine to order again. The combination of fudge, the nutella-like Hazelnut crunch and the banana cake and cream layers is terrific and pretty unexpected. I've got less love for the pistachio cake, despite the masterful lemon curd. The real point here is that at Milk Bar, Chang fails at doing what he usually does, which is tweaking classics to make them more "delicious", as he constantly appears to repeat. Traditional French or German patisserie is just better than this hopped up American stuff, no matter how many calories Chang packs into each 14 foot high slab, but the bakery is run without any knowledge of that underlying fact. As I heard one employee explain to a customer asking about Momofuku's italian stick bread, "it's like a baguette, but more flavorful".

No, not really.