Momofuku Ko Restaurant closes in New York, USA – 11/10/2023 – Food

The small restaurant in New York’s East Village has transformed the city’s dining scene and influenced chefs around the world over the past 15 years. Now Momofuku Ko becomes a victim of new transformations in world cuisine, and served its last dinner on Saturday (4).

Opened in 2008, Ko was the first refined food address of chef David Chang, who already had other restaurants in the city and was one of the most influential at the time — if anyone anywhere in the West nowadays eats steamed oriental breads (baos) stuffed with pork belly, Chang is at least partly to blame.

Since then, the restaurant has been acclaimed by critics, received two stars from the Michelin Guide and has become a must-visit address for anyone who loves good food (and can afford it). But it did not resist its own aging.

A decade ago, the group was a global gastronomy phenomenon, driven by a time when gastronomy blogs proliferated on the internet that broke the traditional model of restaurant advertising. Descriptions and comments about Ko fed the then-nascent social networks into what would become a widespread phenomenon today.

And the success was not only due to the trend, but because of the innovative nature of the proposal to break barriers in haute cuisine and the excellence and originality of the food served there. Following the model that was already successful in informal establishments such as Noodle Bar and Ssäm Bar, Ko mixed French and Asian techniques and ingredients in creative and disruptive dishes.

His food was truly inspired. I visited in 2010, when I lived in the city, and I left the restaurant so ecstatic that the experience led to the opening of the book “Eating the Great Apple” (Visual Memory), published in 2012. The soft-yolk egg with caviar and chips is unforgettable, as well as the foie gras served grated with lychee, looking like a cloud. I remember one of the chefs presenting so many details about the lamb dish that it seemed like he was going to say the name they called the animal when it was alive.

In addition to critical acclaim, Ko emerged with a special aura by treating haute cuisine without the pomp of more formal restaurants. It had few tables, served customers at a counter facing the kitchen where the chefs worked, prohibited using cell phones or taking photos of the dishes and had a reservation system that looked like a video game.

Created with a rebellious attitude by a chef who was 30 years old and wanted to serve haute cuisine to the masses (for US$85 for the menu at the time), Ko grew and changed. It has become more expensive and formal in recent years, costing as much as US$280 at the time of its closing.

Older and now a family man, Chang had left aside much of the radical stance he had in building his “empire”. He moved to Los Angeles, opened more restaurants across the country and went from being just a chef to becoming a TV and podcast presenter and owner of a seasoning and food brand. Ko was somewhat left aside.

In an official statement, the Momofuku group explained that Ko’s closure is because the culinary world today is very different from that of 20 years ago.

After the pandemic, customer expectations changed, while inflation hit the market and made it difficult for restaurants to operate. “Things are crazy these days,” Chang said during a rant about the state of world food on his own podcast, The Dave Chang Show.

The decision to close Ko reflects all these internal and global transformations. When informing employees about the restaurant’s fate, Chang claimed that there was nothing wrong with it, and that the idea was to close it while they were still healthy. The same Ko location should be renovated and become a new development soon, with a new look and a different, more current proposal.