Welcome to part two of my upper west side adventure! As part of my ongoing obsession with food headlines, I recently read that a third location of the Milk Bar had recently opened on the upper west side. For those of you who don’t know, the Milk Bar can best be described as a type of bakery which is owned by Momofuku who owns a few Asian restaurants in New York City including one for haute cuisine and a noodle bar.

Momofuku Milk Bar
561 Columbus Avenue at 87th street
New York, NY
4.25 stars out of 5 stars

I will admit that I have been to the midtown location of Milk Bar a few times before and one of my favorite items there is the compost cookie: despite the way it sounds, this is actually a delicious creation which includes an outstanding combination of chocolate chips, pretzels, potato chips, coffee, and butterscotch. This time around, my friend suggested that we try the infamous crack pie (yes, it’s really called crack pie, and no it’s not what you think, all of the pie’s ingredients are legal). It is difficult to accurately describe the taste of crack pie; all I can say is that the filling is gooey, thick, and I don’t even want to know how much butter and sugar it contains. (For your information, I was told that in the south it is called chess pie, but having lived in the south I am only familiar with the pecan and sweet potato varieties of pie). The crisp graham cracker crust does its best to offset the crack pie filling but the slice was so small that I felt the crust was only there for support. I experienced a strange feeling after taking my first bite: I didn’t love the pie, but I didn’t hate it; essentially the crack pie represented truth in advertising and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. This was reinforced when, halfway through the pie, I realized that I was enjoying it more and more with every bite and I was thinking of buying more. Could crack pie really be that addictive? Yes and no: the sweet tooth part of my brain (yes this part actually exists for me) was thrilled by the temptation to ingest more delicious sugar; however, the logical side of my brain thought that at almost 6 dollars for a small slice of crack pie, it was not worth getting another slice. Here is a more in depth description of crack pie:

http://nymag.com/bestofny/food/2009/pie/
And then there were the cake truffles: leftover scraps of cake batter turned into little truffle sized pieces of heaven. First we tasted the birthday cake truffles, where the birthday cake batter is blended with sprinkles and rolled in “cake crumbs”. These were the most delicious treats I tasted all night; they are as good as they sound and I highly recommend them. Finally, we tried chocolate chip cake truffles: these seemed to be filled with chocolate cake batter and chocolate chips. While they were excellent, for some reason these truffles were outshined by the birthday cake ones. My only issue with my experience at Milk Bar was the service; the people working behind the counter seemed somewhat abrupt and were not particularly helpful. Nevertheless, I still am a huge fan of Milk Bar and will be returning there very soon.

Where will I go next? Please stay tuned for more of my restaurant adventures!
Dan