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- Momofuku Bakery & Milk Bar
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207 Second Ave., entrance on 13th St.; 212-254-3500
There is no simpler pie than a chess pie: eggs, butter, corn flour, sugar, brown sugar, and that’s about it. And yet there couldn’t be more confusion about the origin of the name. Some say it’s a derivation of �cheese pie� (certain pies were called cheese pies way back when even though they contained no cheese). Others say the name comes from the fact that pies were kept in a �pie chest� or �pie safe,� maybe to protect them from hoboes and pie burglars. Another theory holds that when a modest southern housewife was asked �What kind of pie is that?,� she said, �It’s just pie,� but in a voice like Dustin Hoffman’s Tootsie, so that it came out as �It’s jes’ pie.� An aged pie-lover in the crowd who must have forgotten his ear trumpet interpreted this as �chess pie.� To put an end to this mayhem, the folks at Momofuku Milk Bar have given the treasured southern confection a nice new name: �crack pie.� Whatever you think of that, the supersweet Momo version is awfully addictive, although, in the manner of a cheeseless cheese pie, crackless. The crumbly crust is good enough to eat on its own, the top is a little caramelized, like a crème brûlée, and the filling achieves a kind of heretofore unknown pie texture: somewhere between a nice lemon curd and a soft fudge, like the best pecan-pie filling you’ve ever had, except without the pecans.
Best Pie
From the 2009 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine