Momofuku Noodle Bar TO

I was very excited when I heard that David Chang was opening a Momofuku in Toronto.  I have always wanted eat at Momofuku because of the reviews of his several locations in NYC.  Each time I have gone to NYC, I tried to include it in, but other restaurants always snuck in on my list instead.

When I walked through the doors of Toronto's Noodle Bar, I was expecting a wait, a long one, especially since the I've seen and been in the long line ups for other new ramen restaurants that have opened up here.  As soon as we walked in through the doors, we were seated immediately.  Strange I thought.

Our order consisted of the infamous pork buns, mushroom buns, the infamous ramen, and the smoked chicken wings.

The pork buns and the mushroom buns arrived first.  Pork buns looked great but tasted disappointing.  This is the first place where I have tried pork buns of any sort (have not been to Ippudo yet).  On the menu it was mentioned that it was high quality pork, Berkhsire?  I have found that Berkshire pork or other humainly raised pork products have evenly layered fat, or distributed evenly.  This is making me think of the maple smoked bacon I have purchased from the Brickworks Farmers Market, it was amazing!  Okay, back to Momofuku. The pork belly had HUGE chunks of fat.  It was quite disgusting.    Flavour wise, it tasted like Chinese BBQ sauce.  And as you can see, the buns were flat, and not light and fluffy as mantau should be like.  The mushroom bun flavour reminded me of Chinese Shanghai noodles.  In otherwords it tasted like soy sauce, some oyster sauce and mushrooms.

Pork Buns

Mushroom Buns

The ramen, looked good.  Tasted blah.  I personally think that what makes the ramen is the broth.  I love a good thick hearty broth.  Here, the broth was a clear broth, no pork flavour, and watery.  The only flavour the broth had was a slightly smoky flavour similar to bonito flakes.  The chasiu was dry, and had a 'pork' flavour that I don't like.   This flavour normally I usually taste when the pork is a cheap quality pork.  To me tastes like a dead rotting taste.  The egg was a poached egg, not a perfectly boiled egg that normal ramen dishes are served with.  I was also not a fan of the noodle.  It's not the ramen noodle that I'm accustomed to.  It was more like the thin wonton noodle rather than ramen noodle.

Ramen

Smoked Chicken Wings.  There was little to no smoke flavour.  Although the wings look browned, it was soggy.  What I hate most about eating chicken is squishy, rubbery, fatty chicken skin.  I hate eating the skin off of steamed/poached chicken.  This is what it resembled.  There was some sort of sauce on the wings.  Tasted like a soy sauce.  Essentially, this dish was no different than my mom's soy sauce chicken wings.

Smoked Chicken Wings

Overall, I was very disappointed in this meal.  I have heard that Momofuku's tasting menu up on the third floor has much better food.  But i'm not sure I'm willing to spend the money to try it after being so disappointed on their signature dishes.  During my trip to NYC, I wasn't willing to go to Momofuku to try their ramen again, even though I have heard that it's much better there.  I did however try their crack pie which I thought was pretty good.  A separate post on my NYC trip later.

Momofuku Noodle Bar TO
Ground Floor
190 University Ave.,
Toronto, ON
M5H 0A3

Lunch 11:30am - 3pm
Dinner 5pm - 11pm

http://momofuku.com/toronto/noodle-bar-to/