PICHET
ONG
by Lawrence Ferber
When Manhattan’s RM restaurant opened
in 2002—the latest venture by Oceana’s exalted
Rick Moonen—innovative pastry chef Pichet Ong felt
tortured over how he could bring something different to
the table. On this particular day, it all boiled down
to selecting an ingredient for a Bavarian: something unusual,
exotic, profound enough to distinguish this incarnation
of the dessert. Something that, when added, might impress
critics and even the celebrity chefs with whom he had
worked in the past, and might yet in the future. What
would it be? Ovaltine.
Ong’s Ovaltine Bavarian won unanimous
praise from “everyone,” he recalls, and went
on to become a true signature dish. His other RM efforts
didn’t fare too badly, either. In its review, The
New York Times’ Eric Asimov gushed: “Mr. Ong
puts together highlights like a little cup of hot chocolate,
thick enough to eat with a spoon, served with a wonderful
hazelnut and chocolate pie, and a pillbox constructed
of rice crisps, banana, and chocolate, containing banana
coins, custard, and bourbon pecans.”
The creative marrying/fusion of typically
disparate ingredients, cultures, and unique presentation—other
Ong standouts include a coconut ice cream sandwich with
kaffir lime dipping sauce, and an Ovaltine Pudding—have
landed the openly gay talent in some of the country’s
top kitchens, including celeb chef/restaurateur Jean-Georges
Vongerichten’s namesake venue, Jean George, La
Folie, Cello, and Tabla. He co-authored a much-praised
2007 cookbook, The Sweet Spot: Asian-Inspired Desserts,
and is presently working on its follow-up. In May 2007
he opened his first restaurant, P*ONG, in Manhattan’s
Greenwich Village, and seven months later, the nearby
pastry shop, Batch. Striking out further on his own,
Ong is considering London and Shanghai as potential
homes for additional P*ONG restaurants.
While he’s been dubbed a “social
butterfly” thanks to his involvement with endless
organizations, altruistic and otherwise (he founded
the weekly dinner event, “Pastry Chef’s Night
Out,” and takes part in benefits for the likes
of City Harvest and Food Bank), I find Ong to be an
intensely reserved raconteur, unimpressed by celebrity.
When he reveals a juicy nugget, for instance that he
was flown to Oprah Winfrey’s Monticello home to
prepare a dinner in 2006, the only detail he imparts
is: “It was fabulous.”
And what was Oprah like? What did she
say? “She loved the desserts.” Which one?
“The Ovaltine Kulfi.” Ovaltine is a favorite
ingredient, isn’t it? “I think it’s great
with everything.”
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We first meet at P*ONG, his Andre Kikoski-designed glowing,
modernist space, on a Thursday evening, during which
I sampled an array of dazzling dishes and innovative
cocktails, like a Waterberry Caipirinha (mae de ouro
cachaça, strawberry, cucumber, lemon, pickled
rind) and the Blush (sake, navan, blackberry, lychee).
While he seemed barely concerned about celebrities like
Madonna swinging by—“She’d be great…if
she paid! It’s a business, you know what I mean?”—he
expressed hope that those cocktails would lure in his
fellow gays en masse. “We want to emphasize the
cocktail part a lot more,” he tells me. “I
think this is a really lovely place for gay people to
come in and have cocktails before they go out to other
places. It’s a great place to meet."
Born in Bangkok, Thailand, he moved
to Hong Kong when he was five, and later to Singapore.
The different styles of cuisine he sampled as a child,
thanks to these early moves, left a deep impression
on his palate, birthing Ong’s “eclectic”
cooking philosophy. “Singapore was a fun time,”
he recalls. “I was exposed to food that was a mixture
of different kinds of cuisine—naturally fused food
like Thai, Chinese, and Indian. There’s a lot of
that going on in Asia, but it’s just a natural
process that’s happened over centuries. I like
Chinese food the best. I think anything that’s
influenced by Chinese is good.”
While he began cooking as a youth, and
immediately fell in love with the process, Ong initially
decided to study and pursue a career in architecture.
He graduated from Massachusetts’ Brandeis University,
and then headed west to the University of California
at Berkeley to complete a master’s degree. Passion
eventually won out, he shifted his focus to cooking,
and in 1992 landed a job as pastry chef at San Francisco’s
La Folie.
As a fledgling professional chef, Ong
found upsides to the California setting. Its pleasant
climate affords a wide variety of locally grown produce,
and gays are a visible part of San Francisco’s
restaurant landscape, unlike pretty much everywhere
else in the world. “It’s probably one of the
least gay professions out there,” he insists. “The
reality is there are very few gays [involved] in cooking
and the kitchen, with the exception of catering or [writing]
cookbooks. They’re more in the front of the house
in management and service positions.”
Continued
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