According to the exacting code laid down by the original food mandarins at Michelin (and normally adhered to by this critic), a reviewer isn’t supposed to pass judgment on a restaurant after just one visit. But then the newest addition to 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.
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