Bong
Chakriya Un cooks Khmer food out of a seven-table room in Crown Heights, and the fish mint on the plate comes from her aunt's backyard.1
Why go
Un and her partner ran this as a pop-up first, Kreung Cambodia. It worked out of Rhodora and The Fly before they took a lease.1 Willa Moore reviewed it for The Infatuation in January 2026, under a headline about Cambodian food finding a house party in New York. The publication lists the room in its Top 25 guide to the city.1 The MICHELIN inspector got there too, filing the cuisine as Cambodian and the room as Worth Queueing For.2 Both send you to the same fish. The lobster is a crab dish rebuilt for Un's mother. She worked a seafood processing plant in Narragansett, Rhode Island.1
Khmer cooking barely exists in this city. Matthew Schneier, who reviews restaurants for New York Magazine, points out that Angkor, the last great Cambodian restaurant here, closed during the pandemic, and that Un spent most of a decade popping up at mai tai bars and chicken counters under the name Kreung, after the herb-and-spice pastes that start Cambodian cooking.3 Bong is a Khmer term of endearment. Her mother, Kim Eng Mann, fled the Khmer Rouge and still carries the shrapnel; she buys the ingredients, brings in her own ferments and catches fish herself for the fish paste.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the crispy whole fish, its skin crosshatched and dusted with toasted rice powder. Pull it off in chunks and wrap it in lettuce with shiso or fish mint.1 The MICHELIN inspector pairs the same fish with green mango sauce.2 It was $44 in October 2025.4
- Order: the bone-in pork chop under tuk trey ping poh, a chutney of Sungold and Sunpeach tomatoes cured in fish sauce, sugar and lime.3
- Order: plea satch ko, the beef salad.2
- Order: the fried shrimp, eaten shell on, in its sticky mango sauce.1
- Order: Mama Kim's lobster, which she has tested herself. It was $95 in October 2025.4
- Avoid: counting on a walk-in once it turns cold. The overflow seating is the sidewalk.1
- Avoid: bringing a vegan or anyone with a shellfish allergy without calling first. Eater found the kitchen unable to work around either in October 2025.4
What locals & experts say
- MICHELIN Guide inspector:
plea satch ko, a Cambodian beef salad with razor-thin meat that melts in your mouth in a delightfully funky, spicy sauce.
2 - Willa Moore, The Infatuation (26 January 2026, 9.2):
the couple running the show is still figuring out some of the finer details. But never when it comes to hit after hit of the incredible Khmer food.
1 - Matthew Schneier reviewed it for New York Magazine in August 2025, two months after it opened, and came down on the side of going anyway:
Despite all the obstacles and little irritants, Bong is delicious and worth the minor headache of finding your way in.
3 - Bettina Makalintal, at Eater, on how to sit down:
Crown Heights' instant Cambodian classic invites you to eat with your hands.
4 - Eater's 38 put Bong on the city list and among its best new restaurants of 2025, and notes that the art and the lampshades were made by people in Un's own community.5
- The Infatuation's ranked city guide has Bong 12th in New York,
A new-school mom-and-pop that's always bumping with house party energy.
6 - The James Beard Foundation ran it as a Best New Restaurant semifinalist in 20267, and Lei took the award.8
Good to know
- Booking: reservations go up twenty days in advance and the room is officially reservation-only.1
- Timing: dinner. The kitchen puts corn on the menu when the farmers' market has it.1 Through its first autumn it opened three days a week, Friday to Sunday.3
- One door: the city's register carries a single permit under this name, at 724 Sterling Place, last inspected in January 2026.
Verdict
must-visit — Come as four and split one bottle across the whole menu. Un's partner picks the wine off a short list. Eat with your hands; they have no bibs yet. When you are done, carry the last glass outside and give the table up.