A Visit to The Chambers Hotel

Ma Peche, the new Midtown location of the Momofuku empire, which is situated in The Chamber Hotel, a swanky habitat on an otherwise downscale block, has started serving lunch, I hear. But that's not what brought me to E. 56th Street on a recent evening. It was to try mixologist Don Lee's new cocktails.

Don Lee, formerly of PDT, is Momofuku chef David Chang's drink man, and goes where Chang goes, Lee follows. That includes Ma Peche. The mezzanine has been serving drinks since late last year, including three original Lee creations: a 7 Spice Sour, a Pikesville Mule and a Sesame Old Fashioned.

The Chambers has that kind of sleek, cold, ultra-modern look that you find in a lot of boutique Manhattan hotels. Not my style, but there it is. One takes an elevator to the mezzanine, where there are an arrangement of precious chairs, tables and couches, and gigantic coffee table art books. There's no bar. You have to take a seat and be served by a waiter to get a drink, which makes everything a lot more formal than I'd like.

I'm a great fan of the drinks Lee devised for the Momofuku Ssam Bar in the East Village, particularly the Celery & Nori. He has a way with eastern flavors and ingredients that leads to unique libation. So I was excited to try the Ma Peche creations. I didn't opt for the Sesame Old Fashioned, mainly because I knew that I'd like it, if that makes sense. I wanted to try the drinks I wasn't sure of.

I started with the 7 Spice Sour, which was a winner. Its base is a togarashi-infused momofuku "private label" honjozo. Added are yuzu/lime juice and simple syrup. As I understand it, togarashi is a common Japanese spice mixture made of—yes—seven ingredients: chili pepper; madarin orange peel; sesame seed; poppy seed; hemp seed; nori; and ground sansho. I do not know for sure if this is the mixture that Lee used. The drink had a nice bite to it, owning to those spices, which plays well with the sourness of the citrus.

I then moved on to the Pikesville Mule, which, I'm sorry to say, did not come off well. The cocktail is made of Rittenhouse rye, lemon juice, ginger syrup and Peychaud’s bitters—apparently an unhappy marriage of ingredients. There was too much lemon in the mix, making the drink too sour, and the ginger syrup was more spicy than sweet. Plus, Peychaud's seemed to be the wrong bitters for this mix. The aftertaste was acrid and bitter. Perhaps I should have gone with the Old-Fashioned after all, which includes toasted sesame infused Hennessy VSOP, caramelized simple syrup and Angostura bitters. Ah well. A reason to return.

In Praise of Don Lee's Celery & Nori

One of the best new cocktails in New York has got to be the Celery & Nori at the Momofuku Ssam Bar in the East Village. This is a bit ironic, since it's a drink you can't get by itself, but must order as a companion to a meal. (Momofuku is too small and too popular a restaurant to waste one of its precious bar stools on a mere tippler.)

The drink is the work of Don Lee, late of PDT, but now in charge of Momofuku's growing drinks program. Lee, of course, is the man who rocked the cocktail world with his technique for "fat-washing" bourbon, resulting in the Benton's Old Fashioned, the massively popular (and much imitated) PDT staple.

Several of the original cocktails at Momofuku have a Asian bent. There's the Sake Lemonade, and the Reverend Palmer, which is grounded on Ceylon black tea-infused Elijah Craig bourbon. But, by Lee's own admission, the most interesting cocktail on the menu is the Celery & Nori (sometimes call the Celery & Nori Old Fashioned). A lot of new cocktails today give you a sense of déjà vu. They taste like something else you've had before. But I've never quite tasted anything Celery & Nori.

The drink is made of nori-infused Laird's apple brandy, celery syrup and celery bitters (nori, by the way, is the Japanese name for various edible seaweed species you see wrapped around your sushi rolls). It's a serious "up" drink, like a Sazerac, though not nearly as moody. You're meant to sip it, take your time. The aroma tickles your nose, like the first breaths of springtime. There are leafy, slightly minty notes, which go nicely with the apple flavors from the Laird's. Unlike most new drink, upon having one, I immediately wanted to have another.

Wish I had taken a picture of it. (That photo up top is of another Momofuku cocktail.) Guess I was enjoying it too much to think that far ahead.