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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.”

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.”

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