Momofuk-yeah

Let me begin by saying: David Chang is a culinary genius.

If you don’t know who he is, Google his name right now. (Or click the link I provided. Or click this one. Or this one. Whatever floats your boat. Just click a link and figure out who he is. You’ll thank me later.)

Brad Pitt and I managed to snag two seats at Momofuku Noodle Bar last year when we were visiting NYC for an event. One shrimp bun and a bowl of spicy ramen later and I was hooked. For a year, I searched all of Kansas City (unsuccessfully) for buns and ramen that could compare.

So, now that we have made our one-way-road-trip to Pennsylvania and we are a mere hour and a half to the Big Apple, I have access to the entire David Chang Momofuku Empire pretty much whenever I damn well please.

When my BF Amy was in NYC for the half marathon a couple weeks ago, we met up and had dinner at Má Pêche. De-li-cious. I would share photos of our shrimp, lobster, pork buns, fried brussels sprouts and spicy fried chicken, but none of the images turned out well enough to do the dim-sum-like-meal justice. Blame the lighting. Or the two martinis I had before we sat down to dinner. Either way, the photos turned out bland. The food was not.

A short week later, Brad Pitt and I found ourselves back in Manhattan on a work-related trip. He was working. I was tagging along…with the dogs.

Our dog friendly hotel was great. But P & P are apparently hotel snobs and did not like this hotel as much as the one we stayed in when Amy was in town and, therefore, whined and cried and barked any time I left the room. I was gone ten minutes before the front desk called, informing us that the dogs would be removed if we could not quiet them down.

I spent the remainder of my day and evening in the room. With the dogs.

The.
Entire.
Rest.
Of.
The.
Day.

Given those circumstances, I was happy to drive them home in the morning and drive back to NYC to pick up Brad Pitt after his work was completed. To treat ourselves for working so hard all weekend, we headed back to Noodle Bar to recreate the amazing meal we had a year ago.

I’m not going to show you the shiitake buns we had this time around. Those are worthy of a Sandwich Saturday post. But, please, feast your eyes on our bowls of ramen.
My Spicy Miso Ramen:

Brad Pitt’s Momofuku Ramen:

I seriously think he should consider changing the name of his empire from Momofuku to MomoFuckYeah. Its that good.