Like many other NYC foodies, I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to get a seat at Momofuku Ko since they opened several months ago. There are only 12 seats (everyone eats at the counter), and reservations are only available online starting at 10am a week in advance. This causes a crush of internet traffic to hit their website at 10:00:00 every day. Go ahead and try it every day from your fastest internet connection, and maybe, just maybe you will get thru to the schedule grid page while there are still some green checkmarks indicating available time slots. But try and click on one of the checkmarks and the odds are that you will be told that someone else has just grabbed that spot ahead of you. This week however, it occurred to me that Halloween falls on a Friday night and it stood to reason that all the young chow hounds who normally jack those precious seats before I can reserve them would probably be out partying till the wee hours and prefer to sleep in on Saturday. So I started reloading the Ko Reservations page over and over throughout the week hoping for a cancellation. Lo and behold, one seat did in fact open up and I snatched it right up, practically in disbelief. What a score!

So, I’d love to show you all the wonderful things I ate today, but unfortunately David Chang has prohibited the taking of pictures. This makes it impossible for me to give you details on every dish because there was such a vast array of brilliant little accoutrements on each of the plates I couldn’t possibly remember which element was on which dish unless I had pictures of them in front of me. In fact, I spent much of the afternoon just trying to recall all the dishes that I had in the order I had them. So I guess I better write them all down here before I forget anything. So here, from memory, is what I had during my 3-hour lunch:

Braised duck tongue on a grilled rice ball
Oyster on the halfshell with hackleback caviar
Kampachi
Fluke
O-toro tartare
Nantucket Scallop
Uni
Beef Carpaccio
A mini roll dubbed “The Butter Bomb”
Lobster Crusted Charwan Mushi
Escargot with Chestnut dumplings
Black bass over soup dumpling
Eggplant Tortellini
Shaved frozen foie gras over lychee and nuts with riesling gelee (their signature dish)
Quail and foie gras terrine
Lamb chop from Elysian Fields
Cheese plate
White Peach sorbet
Chocolate-Corn parfait

Pretty insane for lunch, even by my standards. The only other meal I can compare it to is the lunch I had at French Laundry. While Ko lacks French Laundry’s atmosphere of refined luxury, the creativity of the food and the quality of the ingredients were every bit as good. So many remarkable little touches left me thoroughly impressed. The oyster was from Duxbury, MA and was generously covered with caviar and accented perfectly with just a few sacs from the flesh of a lime. The raw fish dishes had things like subtle gelees, microscopically diced garnishes and one even had finely sliced miyoga, probably my favorite but relatively unknown Japanese veggie. The “lobster crust” on the charwan mushi was a super thin disc of what essentially appeared to be fish cake, but tasting of fresh sweet lobster meat instead. Completely brilliant, since it takes the classic dish and gives it a much needed textural complement. And on and on it went with subtle but brilliantly conceived details like that throughout the meal.

And you simply cannot speak of brilliance without mentioning their signature dish. A frozen torchon of foie gras grated with a microplane over bits of lychee, roasted hazelnuts and riesling gelee. The concept is mind blowing and the flavors and textures even more so. The nuts give you something to chew while the foie gras shavings and gelee melt in your mouth simultaneously enveloping your palate with richness and lightness if that makes any sense, and rounded out beautifully with the faint sweetness of the lychee. I had heard so much about this dish before I went that I half expected it to be a letdown. Let me tell you, you can believe the raves. It is definitely a contender for best dish I’ve ever had, bar none. No joke.

And while I’m doling out superlatives, I also have to mention the lamb chop. Holy crap it was so amazing. First of all, it was much larger than the little chops you see everywhere else. Flavor-wise, it was mild, meaty and delicious. And the gaminess that most people associate with lamb? In these Elysian Fields chops, that gaminess is so muted that you really have to be looking for it in order to taste it. Normally gaminess is most concentrated and unpleasant in the fat of the lamb, but not in these. In fact the fat on these chops was arguably the best part of the dish. Pan seared so that the edges of the fat were toasty-crisp, it intensified the richness and the lamb flavors. And these chops were plenty fatty so there was no problem getting a little bit of that insane fat to go with every bite of that sweet mild meat. Definitely the best lamb chop I’ve ever had and it’s not even close. I don’t even know what to compare it to, it’s that far off the charts. If anyone knows where to buy lamb chops from Elysian Fields, please let me know!

Oh, and one other nice detail came at the end of the meal. They give everyone a little jar of pickled vegetables to take home with them. Some of the veggies in there I don’t recognize at all, but you can bet I’m eager to try ’em. It’s certainly a much more interesting parting treat than cookies or chocolates. Very cool and unique, just like the restaurant itself.

I should also mention that I had the wine pairings with all 19 of these dishes. There were a few missteps in my opinion, especially the Amontillado towards the end of the meal, but there were quite a bunch of winners too. Some of my favorites were the Joel Falmet champagne, the Nicolas Potel Volnay and the Reymos Sparkling Moscatel. But perhaps the greatest little discovery was the Kome Kome Shu sake. Lightly sweet, fruity, low in alcohol and positively refreshing with every sip. You can definitely identify it as sake when you taste it, but it kind of reminds me of the flavor profile of a Vouvray. I can see myself drinking this on a regular basis, especially during summer months.

I gotta give props for the service at Ko as well. Despite some of the things I had read prior to going, I found all the cooks to be pleasant, knowledgeable and engaging. The two young ladies who were handling the wine service and place settings were as friendly and attentive as they were attractive. And they were very attractive. 🙂 The whole operation seemed to flow flawlessly at a nice, relaxed, yet efficient pace. All the cooking happens right in front of you so if there were any panic or stress, we would have seen it and felt it. The dishes came out promptly, settings and glasses were cleared away literally seconds after I was done with them, re-set for the next course minutes later, and everything was evenly spaced apart, never a delay in between. Not a single staff member ever acted rushed, and the result was that it all just felt so natural. Like yeah, it was kick ass service, but to them, it was really no big deal. That impressed me. Now all I hope is that I won’t have to wait until next Halloween before I can score another reservation!