All that and a jar of pickles

Epic.

That's the best word I can come up with to describe the lunch I had a Momofuku Ko last week. Twenty-two courses in three and a half hours.

While randomly checking the Ko reservation system, I saw the elusive green check mark and grabbed it, before realizing that it was on Friday and Eric was in Florida. So I dragged my friend Jason to join me in this experience. Little did we realize what we were in for (despite Eric and I eating there for dinner once before).

So here we go...from start to finish:

• Fried prawn head
• Pommes soufflé with caviar
• Veal tongue with a romaine cream and pickled cucumber
• Oyster with caviar and lime
• Kampachi with flaked sea salt and daikon radish
• Long Island fluke with an aged chili paste, soy ginger shallots and blood orange
• Sweet Maine shrimp with avocado and seeds from a cypress broom tree
• Nantucket scallops marinated in meyer lemon with freeze dried soy sauce, watermelon radish, shiso and meyer lemon zest
• Sea urchin with yuba (soymilk skin) and puffed black rice
• Stewed octopus, fried buckwheat cake, sea beans, meyer lemon and paprika aioli
• Puffed egg with a Benton's bacon broth, Tennessee winter truffles, hazlenut oil and chives
• Braised snails, brussel sprouts, Fuji apple, chestnut dumplings and sage sour cream
• Bagel with bacon cream cheese
• Diver scallop with razor clams, smoked grapes, lily bulbs, green tea broth and black onion seeds
• Pork risotto with black Tuscan kale, maitake mushrooms, guanciale (pork jowl), pickled mustard seed and an incredibly rich pork jus
• Frozen shaved fois gras with lychee, riesling gelee and pine nut brittle
• Sweetbreads on an almond butter, terrine of confit potatoes and black trumpet mushrooms
• Sous vide lamb chop with sheep's milk ricotta and a roasted onion stuffed with braised lamb ribs, ras-el-hanout and breadcrumbs
• Raw sheep's milk cheese and Humbolt Fog goat cheese with smoked grapefruit, red onion marmalade, and pork fat brioche
• Apple cider sorbet with ginger graham cracker ganache and toasted marshmallow
• Parsnip ice cream with chocolate fudge, hazelnut nougat and grapefruit threads

All in all, an amazing meal. It was such a production that by the time we were savoring the sweetbreads, we were already reminiscing about the fluke.

At the end, the chef de cuisine came by with a jar of housemade pickled vegetables as a "Congratulations for making it through" takeaway.

And to top off an already great day, I saw Joe Ades' daughter in Union Square while walking to the subway. She's taken up her father's spot selling vegetable peelers. So I finally bought one.