Momofuku Milk Bar Cookies Invade South Philly

The Erace brothers, Adam and Andrew, purveyors of local fine foods at Green Aisle Grocery down on East Passyunk Ave. in South Philly, have magically made Momofuku Milk Bar cookies available to Philadelphians who don't have the extra half day to venture to David Chang's renowned New York bakery, Milk Bar, headed by pastry chef Christina Tosi.

Fresh baked Momofuku Milk Bar cookies are FedEx-ed weekly to Green Aisle, and sold individually or in containers of six. I arrived at the South Philly grocer mere minutes after Green Aisle tweeted the arrival of the cookies (Green Aisle is great about tweeting new arrivals and specials, so be sure to follow them), and snagged one of each of the five varieties of cookies available — Corn, Chocolate Chocolate, Blueberry and Cream, Cornflake-Chocolate Chip-Marshmallow, and Compost Cookie — to put the cookies to the taste test and see if they lived up to the hype.
Let's just start with my favorite cookie out of the bunch, the Corn cookie. This soft, yellow cookie tastes not like corn bread, as you might imagine, but like the sweetest creamed corn you've ever had, but the cookie is not the over-sweet sugar bomb that some of the other Milk Bar cookies are. The Corn cookie is a unique and compelling flavor you won't find at most bakeries, so comes out top winner.The Chocolate Chocolate cookie has a deep chocolate aroma, is moist and chewy — like a cookie and fudge had a baby — with hints of salt enhancing the bitter and sweet. If you are a lover of chocolate, and want a deep chocolate flavor without the distraction of chocolate chips, this is the cookie for you.
The Blueberry and Cream cookie is sweet and chewy, studded sparingly with white chocolate chips, and perhaps too sparingly with dried blueberries. The "cream" part of the cookie is achieved by adding milk powder, but the "cream" did not shine through the sugar and butter. I guess I was hoping for more blueberry and cream.
The Cornflake-Chocolate Chip-Marshmallow cookie has crispy, toffee-like edges (due to the high sugar and butter content, many of Momofuku's cookies have toffee-like edges), and the soft center is studded with chocolate chips, crunchy little bits of cornflakes, and crispy/bendy melted marshmallow blobs. This cookie is incredibly sweet. I would have loved this cookie as a kid, but as even a sugar-loving adult, this cookie is a bit much.Out of the package, the Compost cookie smells like coffee, and that's because there are coffee grounds in the cookie. Also in the cookie are chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, graham crumbs, pretzels, and potato chips. Besides the hint of coffee, the Compost cookie and the Cornflake-Chocolate Chip-Marshmallow cookie are almost identical in that they are overbearingly sweet, soft cookies chock-full of sweet and savory goodies. Again, I would have loved this cookie as a kid.

Honestly, all of the Milk Bar Cookies taste great. And it's no wonder, because butter jockeys for first (!!) and second place in the ingredient list for every single cookie. I think Momofuku Milk Bar cookie receive such high praise because they are overly decadent with butter and sugar. The only cookie that truly impressed me was the Corn cookie, because it's unique and captures the flavor of fresh, sweet corn so well.

At $3.25 each, you can sample all of the Momofuku Milk Bar cookies, and decide on a favorite yourself. Just be sure to get to Green Aisle soon after Fed-Ex drops off the delivery, because they go lickety-split!

Green Aisle Grocery
1618 E. Passyunk Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19148
215-465-1411

Green Eggs Cafe

Didn't you hear, South Philly's Green Eggs Cafe is the new weekend brunch hot spot. This translates into an hour wait if you want to grub during normal brunch hours.

But the genius of Green Eggs Cafe, and what takes the sting out of the wait, is that there is a large room on the cafe side of the restaurant with two long couches to sit on and two large TV's (usually tuned to Food Network), one above the fireplace and one behind the cafe bar, to while your time as you sip on a coffee or some other beverage. If the weather's nice, have a seat at the outside bar with stools along the entrance ramp. So much better than standing in line, huffing streetside for an hour.

Thanks to the two open, airy rooms with plenty of light from open windows and doors when the weather is amenable, Green Eggs does not feel like your typical cramped Philly dining room with row house dimensions. Green Eggs could be in California. Or Texas. Or anywhere other than Philly. The atmosphere is refreshing, actually.
Green Eggs puts to practice the green philosophy by using LEED-certified building products, using biodegradable plastic ware, composting, banning Styrofoam, sourcing local ingredients (who doesn't say that?), and donating the $1 charge for filtered tap water to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Peanut butter-stuffed or vanilla creme brulee are the two decadent French toast options, and I went with the creme brulee. With creme brulee in the name, I was expecting a thick custard-stuffed French toast, but this is not the case. A stack of creme brulee batter dipped bread tasting like normal French toast topped with vibrant and fresh berry compote and whipped cream are centered on a plate of maple syrup and creme anglaise. Perhaps the creme brulee let-down was for the best, because I was actually able to finish the stack without feeling weighed down.
The breakfast burrito is a behemoth filled with eggs, olives, corn, chorizo (omitted by request), Tex-Mex cheese, and signature potatoes (roasted breakfast potatoes by any other name) topped with pico de gallo, sour cream, and avocado in a pool of fire roasted red pepper black bean sauce. Phew, that was a lot of ingredients! Greasy potatoes, eggs, and tortilla are what you'll mostly be eating, along with a thin bean sauce that lacks heat or a zesty punch. Meh. That's how I feel about all tofu scrambles, but at least Green Eggs does tofu scramble well. No watery tofu over-seasoned with turmeric or curry powder, just a well balanced scramble studded with thinly sliced green peppers and onions, topped with crunchy nuggets of Bac-o-Bits, which are vegan if you didn't know, but all vegans know this.

The accompanying bowl of fruit was nicely varied and super fresh. Your choice of toast arrives in a cute wire basket.Thinly sliced beets hide underneath a tower of spotlessly fresh mixed greens dressed with a dried oregano-heavy herbal vinaigrette in need of more acid and charm. Mix in olives, tomato slices, and the artichoke hearts on the side of the plate and you've got a Seinfeld-ian big salad.
Watching see-through wire baskets of fries (regular or sweet potato) float through the room en route to other tables was just the sales pitch I needed to order my own. Lack of crispness is always a problem with sweet potato fries, but these limp, medium-cut fries are still salty, sweet and tasty.

Service at Green Eggs is a crapshoot. Obviously, going during weekend brunch hours is the worst time. During one prime weekend brunch time visit we suffered an hour wait for a table and then a ten minute wait for acknowledgment after being seated, a long wait for food, and a mostly absent server that we replaced with which ever server happened to pass our table, and then a long wait for the check. On another visit during a weekend mid-afternoon we opted for the bar seating on the cafe side of the restaurant and received much better service, only because the cafe servers are captive behind the counter and easy to flag down.

I will bemoan this about Green Eggs, but, really, I could say this about most every breakfast and brunch spot in Philly: how about getting some tempeh! Green Eggs' menu lists bacon, turkey bacon, pork roll, sausage, smoked ham, scrapple, and chorizo as sides. They just about covered it all...except for the non-egg, protein-seeking vegetarian. With just that one simple menu addition, I'll be able to substitute tempeh for meat and enjoy many more dishes.

Welcome, Green Eggs, to the club of popular Philly weekend bruncheries with absurdly long waits and good, but not mind-blowing food. South Philadelphians no longer need to walk north to wait for brunch. They can lounge on a couch watching Food Network while suckers else where stand on the street.

Green Eggs Cafe
1306 Dickenson St., Philadelphia, PA 19147
215-226-EGGS
Open daily: 7am-7pm
Full menu: 8am-4pm
Supplemental menu: 7-8am and 4-7pm
BYOB