Momofuku Ko

David Chang’s white-hot East Village dining empire, Momofuku Ko, isn’t a restaurant in the normal sense of the word. You could call it a semi-exclusive dining club, but that wouldn’t be quite accurate either. The murmuring, deferential patrons who manage to find a spot at the modest, twelve-seat bar are chosen at random, by a computerized system that seems designed not to entice people to dine at Momofuku Ko but to drive them away. These seats can be booked only a week in advance, and only by logging on to the Momofuku Website. The computer begins taking reservations each morning at ten o’clock, and thanks to the legions of devoted and increasingly frantic Chang groupies (the 30-year-old chef was just nominated for his third James Beard award, and has been the subject of many glowing profiles in many glossy magazines), they’re gone not in minutes but in seconds. Under these trying conditions, getting in the door once, let alone the three times most critics prefer, could take months or even years.

So how do you crack this fiendishly egalitarian, New Age reservation system? It helps to have the services of many diligent assistants willing to peck at their keyboards like gaming zombies for an entire week. Is it worth the aggravation? This depends, I suppose, on your point of view. One reason Chang is regarded as a revolutionary by a new generation of diners and cooks is his gleeful willingness to take the old-line, haute cuisine restaurant conceits and smash them to bits, while still cooking inventive, high-quality food. The name of this willfully anonymous anti-restaurant is barely visible on the door, and the façade is sheathed in what looks like high-tech chicken wire. Inside, there are no waiters, no decorations on the plain butcher-block walls, and no printed menu. Chang’s inspiration is the classic Japanese bar-dining model practiced, most notably in New York, by Masa Takayama at his uptown restaurant, Masa. But the price of a single omakase meal at Masa is $400. At Momofuku Ko, my leisurely, inventive, often wickedly delicious ten-course dinner cost $85.

The first amuse item is Chang’s calling card (and that beloved kitchen favorite), a crackly, feathery curl of pork rind. The second is a candy-size “housemade” English muffin slathered with more salty pork fat. The grateful food geek next to me pops it into his mouth. “I’ll eat that for breakfast any day,” he says. Chang’s somewhat outsize reputation has been based, until now, on his gift for taking these kinds of humble dishes (bowls of ramen at Momofuku Noodle Bar, or the famous pork butt at Momofuku Ssäm Bar) and imbuing them with the finest ingredients, and topflight technique. But Momofuku Ko (ko means “son of” in Japanese) is the chef’s first attempt at ambitious, haute cuisine cooking, and as the big dishes appear, the meal picks up steam. A tangle of gummy fluke is overwhelmed by too much yuzu and hot Sriracha pepper. But after that comes a classic Changian creation, a bowl of technically perfect French consommé cut with a hint of kimchee purée (“Korean consommé,” the chef calls it) and garnished with a square of frizzled, gently melting pork belly and a briny oyster from Cape Cod. A soft-cooked egg is next, only this egg has been smoked and then cut open so that the smoky-sweet yolk runs into a pleasing mix of caviar (from Tennessee), tangy sweet-potato vinegar (from Japan), and a pile of crunchy, nickel-size potato chips.

Note:

Reservations are gone by 10:05 a.m., but cancellations occur throughout the day. Hang over the computer, and you might get lucky.

Ideal Meal:

The fixed-price menu is constantly evolving. Our favorites so far: kimchee purée, foie gras, deep-fried short rib, cereal-milk panna cotta.

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Below are some dishes' photos I manage to get
They look really nice

The most colourful dishes

Below is the mysterious dishes, guess what hiding beneath it?
Besides, I tried to see if I am able to reserve any seat
But it seems like it is fully booked for the whole week

This restaurant using a lots of new idea.

Online Reservation.
Maximum 12 seat.
Bar type dining style.
Alot different nice dishes.
No waiter, the cook will serve you.

NO MIDDLEMEN David Chang, chef at the new Momofuku Ko in New York, serves with a smile.

And...Only for those who are fast enough to click the reserve buttons able to reserve the limited seat.

Wonder when Malaysia will have this kind of new concepts' restaurant.
Hope this open someone's mind in starting a new business! :)

(Acquired from http://nymag.com/restaurants/reviews/45942/)