Restaurant Review: Bong | The New Yorker

Bong (the identify comes from a Khmer time period of kinship and respect) is run by the Cambodian chef Chakriya Un, who was born in a Thai refugee camp and grew up within the U.S., and her companion, Alexander Chaparro, who emigrated from Venezuela. For eight years, Un operated Kreung, an acclaimed pop-up whose explorations of taste and reminiscence have been a proving floor for lots of the dishes now on Bong’s menu. The lineup is tight—a celebration of 4 may (and will!) order the entire thing. Along with providing a survey of Khmer delicacies, with its sturdy flavors and bitter ferments, the restaurant additionally pays homage to Un’s family, notably her mom, Kim Eng Mann, or Mama Kim, who can generally be noticed working within the kitchen. She developed the recipe for the cha kapiek, a bracing dip during which a symphonic, funky fermented-shrimp paste is pounded with recent shrimp and peanuts; it’s served with a mound of satisfyingly crinkle-cut crudités and seed-studded shrimp chips. Mama Kim’s namesake lobster (listed with the minimal description “IYKYK”) is an impressive mountain of crustacean legs and claws, the items stir-fried with oodles of slivered ginger and a sweet-spicy herbaceous paste, made by Mama Kim, that adheres, slurpably, to the meat and drips juicily onto a pile of rice under. A toothsome hanger steak is topped with a dynamic tuk kreung—a mix of eggplant, chiles, and one other paste made with fish that Mama Kim catches herself.Chakriya Un, who runs the restaurant along with her companion, Alexander Chaparro, was working the kitchen proper up till the latest delivery of their baby.Virtually every thing on the menu is thrilling. Even what fails to be thrilling, comparable to a reasonably floppy inexperienced salad that I attempted on one go to, manages to be a minimum of fascinating. (The dressing on that salad was afire with Kampot peppercorns, a hard-to-find Cambodian selection that has a tealike flowery astringence.) One other salad of chewy-crisp pork jowl and sliced melon is zingy with garlic and pickle-tart. The spherical sweetness of squid, fried in a light-as-air batter, is magnified by intensely floral curry leaves and a salty snowfall of shaved cured egg yolk. A bone-in pork chop, thick as a dictionary, tender as might be, and drowning in a luscious mess of charred tomatoes marinated in a sugar-lime-fish-sauce concoction, options each shade of bitter and candy.Helen, Assist Me!E-mail your questions on eating, consuming, and something food-related, and Helen could reply in a future publication.Together with Mama Kim’s lobster, a dish about which I’ve had literal desires, my favourite factor on the menu was the entire fried fish—dorade, on one go to, the pores and skin crackly and dusted with toasted rice powder—which eyeballs you lasciviously from an oval plate. Its flesh is scored into diamonds, the best way you may slice a lattice into the fats finish of a pork shoulder; it’s visually hanging and functionally fairly helpful, creating excellent little pull-off morsels able to be dipped in sour-tamarind sauce and wrapped up in a lettuce leaf with Vietnamese coriander and diếp cá (a punchy herb often called fish mint). Right here, maybe, the chaotic-party power of the place may have used slightly focus, or been channelled into a quick anatomy spiel: I noticed method too many tables dive ecstatically into the fried fish—after which, too fortunately, permit their plates to be cleared away with out realizing that, for those who flip the creature over, there’s a complete second serving to be discovered on the opposite aspect.A complete fried fish is served with sour-tamarind sauce and herbs, together with lettuce leaves for wrapping.Most of the restaurant’s valuable few seats are located out entrance.It’s doubly a disgrace to overlook the second half of the fish just because a seat at white-hot, tiny Bong is, in the mean time, a very valuable factor. For many of Bong’s opening months, Un and Chaparro have been ever current within the tiny area, Chaparro working the entrance of home and Un, gloriously pregnant, within the kitchen. As a newish dad or mum myself, nonetheless very a lot obsessive about the oddness and surprise and distress of human gestation, I discovered Un’s bodily presence within the restaurant extremely transferring—I can’t consider one other time I’ve seen somebody who’s visibly anticipating working in a restaurant, not to mention the chef and proprietor and engine of a spot. After the very latest delivery of their baby, Un has taken a break from the all-consuming calls for of restaurateuring to take care of the totally distinct all-consuming calls for of early parenthood. The restaurant stays open, run by Un’s proficient kitchen staff, with Un, Chaparro, and Mama Kim dropping in often; the meals stays sharp and brilliant and deep and exhilarating, the temper vivacious and younger and loud and polychromatic. What a factor it’s to convey life into this world! ♦