Momofuku’s Fried Chicken Dinner

Over the weekend, I went to Momofuku Noodle Bar for their fried chicken dinner. For $100, you get two chickens prepared two different ways: Southern Style (coated with buttermilk, Old Bay seasoning, salt, and pepper and fried twice) and Korean Style (fried three times and glazed with a semi-spicy Korean red sauce). The meal also comes with mu shu pancakes, long spicy peppers, baby carrots, red ball radishes, shiso leaves, bibb lettuce, four sauces (soy-garlic jalapeno, hoisin, bibim sauce, and soy-ginger scallion sauce) and an herb basket. I invited David, Lou, Blake, Justin, and Julie for the dinner, although I was very skeptical that two chickens could feed 6 people, but I figured it would be more fun with more people.

Initially, I made the reservation for Tuesday night around 10pm, but the dinner is supposed to take about 2 hours, so I gave the reservation to Talida and made another reservation for Saturday night. It was a late dinner (11:55 was the reservation time), but I figured everyone goes out on Saturday nights, anyway, so what’s so late about a midnight dinner?

Blake and I ran into each other on the subway and met up with Lou, David, Justin, and Julie. The restaurant was pretty packed for midnight so they took a little bit getting our table cleaned up. While we waited, we discussed our excitement and Justin’s tummy ache. As soon as we sat down, we were presented with menus for food and drinks (apparently the chicken takes another 20 minutes to cook so we didn’t actually eat until around 12:30). David ordered an egg to curb his appetite while we waited for the chicken:

The egg was topped with some fried scallions, chives, and salt and pepper. They accidentally sent over two and while the first one was really good, the second one was completely over-salted. Lou and Blake said it would’ve been good if the eggs weren’t so salty and I think they might’ve forgotten that they salted it initially and then went to town with the salt again.

After our eggs, our veggie platters arrived. The carrots and radishes were definitely the best AND they come with unlimited refills (same with the sauces and mu shu wrappers). Here’s David eagerly awaiting the arrival of fried chicken:

After a little more waiting (and talking about how excited we were for our chicken dinner), our meal came:

Mu shu wraps, fried chicken (the Southern style is closer in the picture and the Korean style is the shiny glazed chicken), lots of vegetables, and the four dipping sauces. The waiter told us his favorite way to eat the chicken (Southern with a mu shu wrapper, shiso leaf, and some soy-ginger scallion sauce), but told us to be creative. Here are some of our creations:

Blake decided to go with just the mu shu wrap and some hoisin sauce:

He likes his creation:

I went with mu shu wrap, lettuce, Southern style chicken (with skin, of course), and soy-garlic jalapeno:

And Lou went with a garbage plate and just piled everything on it:

The Southern style fried chicken is definitely the chicken you want to eat; the skin is crispy and flavorful and the chicken meat is some of the most tender chicken I’ve ever eaten. The Korean style chicken isn’t terrible, but it pales in comparison to Bon Chon. My favorite sauce was the soy-garlic jalapeno (it’s so good I could almost drink it straight) and the soy-ginger scallion sauce was good, but didn’t go with any of the chickens. The hoisin sauce didn’t taste good with any of the chickens (more of a duck sauce, in my opinion), and the Korean bibim sauce was the same as the glaze, so I didn’t bother with it, either.

The waiter replenished our vegetable platter three times (carrots, chicken, lettuce, mu shu, radishes, and chicken is definitely the way to go; the textures and flavors were incredible!) and we were only left with wings from the Korean style (but Justin only had one piece, so I think if he had felt 100%, we wouldn’t have had any leftovers). The meal was really fun and messy and I would DEFINITELY go back; in fact, I think I enjoyed eating the meal at the later time because the restaurant was practically empty and it wasn’t difficult to get the waiter’s attention. The meal wasn’t too expensive, either, especially since we had 6 people split it evenly; make a reservation now – you won’t regret it!