What's the scoop?

Art Culinaire, Spring, 2005

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Wong concurs on this point. "Our food is adapted to New York," he explains. "Eighty to ninety percent of the flavors are authentic, but we apply some Western principles. For instance, in Singapore you can get a black pepper crab, but a New Yorker doesn't want to use his fingers to eat the crab, so we use whole shrimp instead, which can be picked up with chopsticks." Wong and Vongerichten have also adjusted some aesthetic aspects. "In an outdoor market, presentation is not really in the foreground. There's one dish from Hanoi, a turmeric-rubbed halibut, and it's usually chopped up in small pieces, with herbs wilted on top. It's a very tasty dish but it's not nicely presented, so instead we pan-sear the fillet, and serve it with an herb salad instead of wilting the herbs. In Hanoi they serve it with chopped peanuts, but we make a peanut sauce. The flavors are 100% accurate, it's just a different adaptation."

What has not been adjusted at Spice Market is the style of service that has eschews the order-fire, expeditor-controlled system for a less formal style, in which plates are delivered to tables as they come up. Dishes are also plated for family-style consumption. "We have a 60-foot kitchen, a very long kitchen, and we are really forced to serve family-style," says Wong. "We wouldn't even be able to consolidate dishes like in a French or Western-style kitchen and send them out by course, because of the kitchen's physical length." Some diners, notes Wong, have had to make a bit of an attitude adjustment about family-style dining. "It's actually been a bit of a problem in New York, because everyone is used to hogging their own dish," he laughs.

Wong tries to remain true to the roots of the cuisine by grinding spices in a mortar with a pestle. "If you go to a Southeast Asian kitchen, you'll see that they still rely heavily on the mortar and pestle. It's a nice tool to work with and requires a little more pride," he says, admitting that, because of the restaurant's high volume, they must also rely on the efficiency of electric grinders. Pride and a willingness to work hard are traits that Wong demands from his cooks, whose skills must measure up to the impeccable standard that Vongerichten's restaurants have come to represent.

"A lot of my cooks are from culinary school, but it's a New York kitchen, so I also have a lot of Latinos," he says, referring to the legions of immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America who make up the backbone of New York kitchen labor, nearly always without the benefit of formal culinary training. "I have to say the Latinos are some of the most reliable guys," he continues. "Some cooks come out of CIA and immediately expect to be made a chef or a sous chef. I don't always see that willingness to learn everything from the bottom up. The reality is, if you have loans for twenty-five, thirty thousand dollars in tuition fees, of course there's a lot of pressure. If you start out on top you can pay that debt off earlier, but do you really know your basics?" he wonders aloud, leaving little doubt that the answer is "no."