Dessert for dinner

After a work happy hour last month, a couple of us decided to grab some food. Our original plan was to get ramen at Ippudo, but that turned out to be a huge wait, so we headed a couple blocks east and north to go to Milk Bar, one of David Chang's restaurants.

We started out with a couple orders of pork buns - high-end versions of northen Chinese cuisine staples. These were made with pork belly, cucumber, hoisin sauce, and scallions all stuffed into a white mantou.

This little Asian version of a slider was delicious. The pork belly was rich and flavorful and the fat had been rendered all soft and clear so it wasn't overwhelming. The cucumber and scallions added some veggie flavors and also cut down the richness of the pork.



I also had a milk - wild strawberry flavor. Kind of like a milkshake, but not as rich or thick, but just as sweet.

Then for dessert, we split 2 kinds of cake - dulce de leche and banana. These cakes were served cold and were 3 to 4 layer cakes with a filling (or fillings) between each layer. The banana cake was tasty, but anything cooked with banana is not my favorite so I concentrated on the dulce de leche one. This was amazing! The cake was light and fluffy and the cream filling was rich but not overwhelming or oily. It was like a mousse filling. It was so good!

Milk Bar was a fun stop but I wouldn't go there for a full meal. I'd rather try David Chang's other places, Ssam (right next door to Milk Bar) or Ko (with their impossibly hard to get reservations) for dinner. Even though the pork buns were delicious and super high quality, I can probably get something a lot cheaper and maybe half as good in Chinatown. Milk Bar would be a fun place to just grab dessert (like yummy dulce de leche cake) after dinner or after going out for the evening.