My spouse and I visited Momofuku CCDC for brunch on a Sunday
morning in mid-February 2019. The restaurant is open daily from 11:30 am to
3:00 pm for lunch/brunch (plus, it opens a half-hour earlier at 11:00 am on
weekends) and for dinner from 5:00 pm until 10:00 pm (closing hours are
extended until 11:00 pm on weekends). You can book a spot using the online Open
Table reservation system.
Momofuku CCDC opened
in 2015 in the Downtown area. The restaurant space offers several places to
dine: at the chef’s counter in front of the open kitchen, at the drinks bar, at
high-top tables near the bar, or at regular-height tables in the main dining
room and the attached rear dining room. Furniture includes blonde-wood tables and
matching backless stools, which seems standard at any Momofuku restaurant.
The menu at Momofuku
CCDC is different than those served at his New-York based venues. (He also has
restaurants in Toronto and Sydney; we have eaten at all of the New York City restaurants
and even one of the Sydney venues.) We shared the shakshouka bing bread as a
starter (Chinese bing is a gilled flatbread similar to a fluffy pita), so we
spooned a tasty mixture of tomatoes, onions, peppers, labne, and spices (held
together by breaking the fried “dippy’ egg on top), atop bite-sized pieces of
bread. Next, we ordered main dishes of the restaurant’s spin on bibimbab (a
rice bowl topped with lots of ingredients, including another “dippy” egg,
shitake mushrooms, seaweed, and spicy cucumbers; we also added the pork
shoulder) and the impossible burger (a vegetarian burger that closely resembles
the real thing, served with fries). We also tried three side dishes: yummy
bacon, kimchi potato salad, and curried red beets. For dessert, we shared the
crack pie a la mode (with cereal milk soft serve) from the attached Milk Bar,
but we didn’t find those as tasty as we had on a previous visit to one of the
Milk Bar venues in NYC. We also sampled
two cocktails: one made with carrots, pineapple, and tequila (called “Carrots
Won the War”), and the other made with beet juice, ginger, egg whites, and gin
(“Heliotrope”)..
We enjoyed our most recent foray into the David Chang
restaurant empire at Momofuku CCDC.
