Midtown Lunch

Blondie tipped us all off to the fact that Momofuku Milk Bar makes croissants. Very, very interesting croissants, like Pastrami and Rye. As one of their thousand-some twitter followers (@Momomilkbar), I also got the scoop that they’ve been making special croissants of the Fluffernutter variety. Alas, it’s the early bird that gets the Fluffernutter Croissant. When I swung by at lunch time they were sold out. Bah. The woman behind the counter recommended the Black Sesame Croissant with Cream Cheese and TriStar Strawberry Jam ($6), to me, so I decided to make the best of a lame situation and give it a try. If you have a sweet tooth (or you were geared up for the luscious sugar bomb promise of a Fluffernutter croissant) this might be a bit on the savory side for you on account of the black sesame.

It was no petite croissant, but then for $6, you’d hope to get a decent sized pastry. The pastry itself was a bit dense which is fine for a crosissantwich type situation like the Pastrami and Rye, but might be a bit much for a breakfast or snack. Still, the prospect of Fluffernutter in croissant form continues to intrigue. According to their twitter this morning they have them on the menu today. Anyone tried any of the other croissants here? Is Kimchi and Blue Cheese Croissant as cray cray as it sounds?

Momofuku Milk Bar (inside Ma Peche), 15 W. 56th St. (btw. 5+6th)

I’m slowly being turned into a Momofuku convert, and it feels like Stockholm Syndrome. Symptoms include randomly stopping by to get cake truffles, stuffing my face with pastrami croissants, and daily checking of the Milk Bar Twitter feed (@Momomilkbar). During one of my checks on Monday I spied a tweet about special “Thanksgiving croissants,” available this week only-dangerous words to a lady who loves limited editions. I made sure to get one at the Midtown Milk Bar (on 56th btw 5th+6th).

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MomoMidtown aka Ma Peche (56th btw 5th+6th) has been switching it up lately, offering new sandwiches and making the switch to cake truffles-an item that is hot on the black market of my office. It was during the procuring of said truffles that I got my first chance to try their new croissants. There are four new ones, one sweet and three savory. Since mine had to make do as my lunch, I ended up trying one of their savories: rye croissant with pastrami, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing! It takes croissants to a whole other awesome level.

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Despite being quite fond of pretty much all of David Chang’s Momofuku ventures, I find that I rarely take the trouble to head to the East Village or fight a damned web site to go to any of them. When Ma Peche (aka MomoMidtown) first opened, I was psyched to have them in Midtown, but being 20 blocks away, I never quite managed to check it out. And then I heard about the new sandwich additions to the lunch menu.  Hello excuse for a  subway-ride lunch!

In fact, it was a good excuse for two back-to-back subway-ride lunches. This week I stopped in two days in a row to try out their new Shrimp Po’ Boy and the Beef Sausage sandwich (and discovered a new happy hour special at the bar!) Check ’em out after the jump.

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Just got word of a big lunch menu change over at Ma Peche (aka Momofuku Midtown, on 56th btw. 5+6th).  Cheap-o Midtown Lunchers are no longer relegated to just ordering off the $10 Midtown Lunch takeout menu.  They’ve added the banh mi maison and two new sandwiches to the regular restaurant’s lunch menu, and all three are only $10!  There’s a new fried shrimp sandwich with lettuce and a pickled ramp remoulade (think po’boy) and a beef sausage hero with cucumber, jalapeno, and mustard.  The two new sandwiches are not available in the upstairs bar area, or on the take out menu, but the restaurant hopes to offer both options soon.

In yesterday’s hot weather I was craving some soft serve and decided to walk over to the Momofuku Milk Bar inside Ma Peche (on 55th btw. 5+6th) to see if they had changed up their flavors since they opened. They hadn’t, but I did notice a few newish developments. Cake slices are still out but now they are selling cake truffles. And midtown Milk Bar office catering is definitely in.
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This week the NYPost, Time Out New York, and NYMag filed decent, but not great, reviews on Ma Peche (our one and only Momofuku restaurant) and we wanted to quickly say DON’T FUCK THIS UP FOR US CRITICS!  We don’t get a lot of worthy splurges in these parts, and we’ve been begging for this particular one since 2007.  And FYI… 56th Street isn’t in the East Village.  Oh, and Ma Peche is awesome.  (Speaking of which, they just added a $25 prix fixe lunch to the online reservations system– you know- for those of you who don’t place the same price restrictions on lunch as we do.)

Last week Lunch’er Christene floated the idea of a banh mi tasting in the connections section of the forums. Yesterday 7 Midtown Lunchers gathered in Grand Central to turn her dream into a reality. Here is Christene’s report…

With open minds and empty stomach, 7 Midtown lunchers gathered to rate 7 different banh mi-style sandwiches in a head-to-head competition. To ensure nuance and balance in the competition, representative banh mi’s were to include Chinatown (Paris Sandwich, Banh Mi Saigon), East Village (Nicky’s), Gramercy (Baoguette) and, of course, Midtown (Ma Peche, Yushi, and Boi To Go). We rated the sandwiches with 5 points assigned to each of 6 categories: bread, pork, vegetables, overall taste, authenticity and value. To ensure purveyors and/or price-point did not prejudice the taste ratings, we labeled sandwiches A-G and provided price on the flip side of post-its, so that tasters could self-reveal price after eating the sample and thus rate value independently.

The results are after the jump…

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Ma Peche aka “Momofuku Midtown” (on 56th btw. 5+6th) is barely four hours old and arguments have already started about whether it’s worth the money. Obviously, lunch’ers aren’t gonna spend $150 on lunch everyday, but Ma Peche’s Milk Bar and $10 Midtown Lunch specials – which they’re still serving in the Chambers Hotel mezzanine you can still order online– are right up our alley! Milk Bar menu after the jump…

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