A Tiny Cambodian Spot Packs an Outsized Punch
Bong (the name comes from a Khmer term of kinship and respect) is run by the Cambodian chef Chakriya Un, who was born in a Thai refugee camp and grew up in the U.S., and her partner, Alexander Chaparro, who emigrated from Venezuela. For eight years, Un operated Kreung, an acclaimed pop-up whose explorations of flavor and memory were a proving ground for many of the dishes now on Bong’s menu. The lineup is tight—a party of four could (and should!) order the whole thing. In addition to offering a survey of Khmer cuisine, with its strong flavors and sour ferments, the restaurant also pays homage to Un’s own family, particularly her mother, Kim Eng Mann, or Mama Kim, who can sometimes be spotted working in the kitchen. She developed the recipe for the cha kapiek, a bracing dip in which a symphonic, funky fermented-shrimp paste is pounded with fresh 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 a magnificent mountain of crustacean legs and claws, the pieces stir-fried with oodles of slivered ginger and a sweet-spicy herbaceous paste, made by Mama Kim, that clings, slurpably, to the meat and drips juicily onto a pile of rice below. A toothsome hanger steak is crowned with a dynamic tuk kreung—a blend of eggplant, chiles, and another paste made with fish that Mama Kim catches herself.
Chakriya Un, who runs the restaurant with her partner, Alexander Chaparro, was working the kitchen right up until the recent birth of their child.
Almost everything on the menu is thrilling. Even what fails to be thrilling, such as a fairly floppy green salad that I tried on one visit, manages to be at least interesting. (The dressing on that salad was afire with Kampot peppercorns, a hard-to-find Cambodian variety that has a tealike flowery astringence.) Another salad of chewy-crisp pork jowl and sliced melon is zingy with garlic and pickle-tart. The round 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 can be, and drowning in a luscious mess of charred tomatoes marinated in a sugar-lime-fish-sauce concoction, features every shade of sour and sweet.
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Along with Mama Kim’s lobster, a dish about which I have had literal dreams, my favorite thing on the menu was the whole fried fish—dorade, on one visit, the skin crackly and dusted with toasted rice powder—which eyeballs you lasciviously from an oval plate. Its flesh is scored into diamonds, the way you might slice a lattice into the fat end of a pork shoulder; it’s visually striking and functionally quite useful, creating perfect little pull-off morsels ready to be dipped in sour-tamarind sauce and wrapped up in a lettuce leaf with Vietnamese coriander and diếp cá (a punchy herb known as fish mint). Here, perhaps, the chaotic-party energy of the place could have used a little focus, or been channelled into a brief anatomy spiel: I saw way too many tables dive ecstatically into the fried fish—and then, too happily, allow their plates to be cleared away without realizing that, if you flip the creature over, there’s an entire second serving to be found on the other side.
A whole fried fish is served with sour-tamarind sauce and herbs, along with lettuce leaves for wrapping.
Many of the restaurant’s precious few seats are situated out front.
It’s doubly a shame to miss the second half of the fish simply because a seat at white-hot, tiny Bong is, at the moment, a terribly precious thing. For most of Bong’s opening months, Un and Chaparro have been ever present in the tiny space, Chaparro working the front of house and Un, gloriously pregnant, in the kitchen. As a newish parent myself, still very much obsessed with the oddness and wonder and misery of human gestation, I found Un’s physical presence in the restaurant incredibly moving—I can’t think of another time I’ve seen someone who is visibly expecting working in a restaurant, let alone the chef and owner and engine of a place. After the very recent birth of their child, Un has taken a break from the all-consuming demands of restaurateuring to attend to the entirely distinct all-consuming demands of early parenthood. The restaurant remains open, run by Un’s talented kitchen team, with Un, Chaparro, and Mama Kim dropping in occasionally; the food remains sharp and bright and deep and exhilarating, the mood vivacious and young and loud and polychromatic. What a thing it is to bring life into this world! ♦
