What's the scoop?

Art Culinaire, Spring, 2005

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Simple or complex, Ong's way with savory seasonings and classic Asian ingredients is very much in demand.

"In a typical day, I'll come to work early in the morning, and about three times a week I have to do a demo, either at the restaurant itself, or at a school, or sometimes even on television," he laughs, sounding equal parts pleased and surprised. Ong has already been featured on the morning network shows and Iron Chef America. He admits to a hunger for a more permanent television niche, while acknowledging the relative dearth of opportunities for pastry chefs. He speculates, "There haven't been many shows featuring pastry chefs, because the pastry arts have been viewed as being difficult or scientific, with lots of precise measured steps, and many secrets."

Until that big offer from PBS or the Food Network comes through, he's content to demystify his work on the page. Having recently finished writing, with Mark Bittman, the pastry section of a book of recipes from Jean-Georges' Asian restaurants, when we spoke he was shopping the proposal for his own book.

Being a writer may take him out of the kitchen and back in front of a computer, the very tool that drove him into the kitchen in the first place, but Ong insists that he'll never abandon the tactile pleasures of his profession, concluding, "I think the hands are the ultimate tools, and everything else is just an extension of your hands."

ON THE EAST SIDE OF THE STREET

UNTIL THE EARLY SPRING of 2004, street food in Manhattan meant chewy pretzels, bristling with salt and dripping with yellow mustard, or "dirty water" hot dogs stuffed into soft white buns and heaped with sauerkraut. That, however, was before a trio of seasoned chefs, having found culinary inspiration in the open-air markets of Southeast Asia, returned from their travels and opened Spice Market. Situated in the white hot heart of New York's Meatpacking District and lushly appointed in dark wood, bright silks and white leather chairs, it's about as "street" as starlet Paris Hilton, but a whole lot smarter--and it's put that city's pushcart food on serious notice.

STANLEY WONG

SPICE MARKET * NEW YORK, NY

Spice Market is the fifteenth property in the Jean-Georges Vongerichten empire, a collection currently that includes eight New York properties, as well as outposts in Chicago, Las Vegas, the Bahamas, Paris, Shanghai and Hong Kong. While Vongerichten and consulting chef Gray Kunz provided the restaurant's initial star-powered buzz, it's chef de cuisine Stanley Wong who keeps the crowds returning for up to 200 lunches and 500 dinners per day. You may recognize Wong from Art Culinaire Issue 66, or from TanDa, another Southeast Asian eatery in Manhattan, whose life was cut short by a concept and name change. Wong ruefully calls the decision to transform TanDa into Sage, a New American eatery, "a train wreck," noting that it closed shortly after the overhaul.

Opening Spice Market has been something of a dream deferred for Wong. He first worked with Vongerichten in 1997, in Hong Kong's Mandarin Oriental hotel, where Wong oversaw all culinary operations, including an outpost of Vong. Vongerichten was impressed with Wong's skills and knowledge, and invited him to New York to help with a new project. Initially slated for a 2001 opening, Spice Market took a back seat to Vongerichten's many other projects, leaving Wong cooling his heels at TanDa. "Luckily for me," says Wong, "shortly after the concept change, Jean-Georges asked me again to join him at Spice Market, and so here I am." Critical praise was immediate and effusive, including a coveted (and somewhat controversial) three-star rating from New York Times interim reviewer Amanda Hesser, who wrote lovingly of the food, the cocktails, the atmosphere, even the raw, meaty street smells outside, while conceding, "Many dishes are street food as invented by Spice Market."