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David Chang is “pausing operations” at Momofuku Ko next week, according to a post on his company’s Instagram account. It goes on: “we won’t call this a goodbye, but ko will no longer operate in the way it has.” Just what that means is unclear, but it sure sounds like some kind of a goodbye given that about three weeks ago Mr. Chang turned out the lights for good at Momofuku Ssam Bar. The strange thing about both announcements is how muted the response has been. Maybe the sheer number of restaurants that have gone under since the pandemic began has made us numb to this sort of news. The reaction would have been different — louder and more apocalyptic — 10 or 15 years ago. Back then, a change in Ko’s no-cameras policy or Ssam Bar’s doomed Korean-burrito menu would light up the food blogs, whose reporters used to chase scraps of Momofuku news like Woodward and Bernstein. If you weren’t living and eating out in New York then, it’s hard to imagine what the early days of those restaurants were like, especially Ko. Even before its opening on First Avenue in 2008, Ko generated attention like some monstrous union of the Suprême Croissant, ChatGPT and the Eras Tour. Some of the coverage — OK, a lot of it — was hysteria, hype feeding on itself. But Ko also got attention because nobody had seen the like of it anywhere. —— tempus fugit, indeed. i remember (especially on here) when the place was raging hot. click