Momofuku Milk Bar & Má Pêche in Midtown

Really, I don’t know what took me so long to visit my neighbor, Momofuku Milk Bar/Má Pêche in midtown. I’ve been waiting ages for a reason to stop by and try their popular menu. SO after an event next door at the Townhouse Spa with Chrissy Teigen (ironically, Teigen wrote a whole post on Momofuku and duck fat shortly after), I realized proximity was the perfect excuse to grab some dessert there with my friend Sabrina visiting from DC.

The funny thing is, I thought the front Milk Bar (with all their desserts galore in a neat window display) and some hot drinks was all there was to this place:

Until we stepped beyond the counter and found the rest of the restaurant — a whole two floors and loft bar area. See, NYC restaurants can fool you sometimes. Anyway. Sabrina and I thought we’d get a table downstairs and order some of the yummy desserts we saw in the front.

But when we sat down and stared at the menu with only 3 dessert options, we soon realized “Má Pêche” (the dining area) has a completely different and more refined menu than the Milk Bar upstairs. A little confused, and more embarrassed than anything, we politely told the waiter we actually wanted to gorge our faces into the cookies and chocolate cakes we saw upstairs and excused ourselves. We felt like such losers.

Well, let’s say what ensued was pretty serendipitous — we ran into the manager, Michael Wetherbee, who seemed to instantly picked up on the fact that we looked defeated. He turned everything around pretty fast — we were seated once again and the evening suddenly turned into a tasting. We wasted no time to order a hot chocolate (above) and cappuccino to start.

First up, the chocolate cake with coconut, coffee, thai basil. The mix of flavors seemed so bizarre but somehow worked. This would end up being my very favorite too. The thai basil gave it a nice kick too!

The best part of the white chocolate with popcorn was the mix of sweet and salty…and running into cold bits of caramel.

And finally banana with maple and hazelnut — this one was a little strong for me. But nonetheless, the menu made for a really inventive and different experience. The best part is you could actually taste all the different flavors in each dessert — no one ingredient seemed to overwhelm the next.

It made for one memorable experience for sure — one minute, we’re thinking we totally failed our dessert outing, and the next we’re full to our stomach with sugar. Thanks, Michael for hosting us and being generally awesome!! If any of you visit here, give him a big hug from me and Sabrina!! 🙂

REPORT CARD
Meal: Dessert
Occasion: Catch-up session over cake
Price: $$$
(Out of three stars)
Ambiance: *** (classy and fun at the same time…the downstairs area seemed to be more business savvy, and the loft area is a lot more buzzy)
Food: *** (desserts are definitely not your typical and delicious all the same)
Service: *** (I swear we were waited on by 4 different people who were equally gracious and attentive)
Would I go back?: Yes! And I plan to bring more people with!

Restaurant Info:
Má Pêche/Momofuku Milk Bar
15 W. 56th St
between 5th and 6th Ave.
New York, NY 10019
Midtown

x
Shy

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