Bonnie's
Calvin Eng named this room for his mother Bonnie. Her steamed egg custard is on the menu, and she measured it with eggshells and intuition. It carries a Bib Gourmand in the 2025 MICHELIN guide.
Why go
Eng cooks Cantonese food through a Cantonese-American childhood in Bay Ridge. The menu lists what he ate at home and at family dinners in Chinatown. The jumbo shrimp go into Kewpie mayonnaise, condensed milk, honey and rice vinegar. Eng built that off the shrimp and walnuts he ate at Chinese banquets as a kid. The rainbow trout is deboned and stuffed with shrimp, fish meat and water chestnuts. He made it with his mother and his aunt when they wanted a whole day together.
The room is on a corner in east Williamsburg, close enough to hear the BQE, done up like a retro Hong Kong diner. The MICHELIN inspector singles out the yeung yu sang choi bao and the salt and pepper shrimp under melted red onions. He also names the cheung fun, seared rice noodles tossed with shrimp and scallop X.O. and bits of cured pork.
Eng started at Nom Wah's Nolita room and then cooked at Win Son from 2018. The Tsingtao comes in one size, and the espresso martini is built in the style of a yuenyeung.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the cha siu, glazed and served on a sesame milk bun in the style of a McRib, with the jing sui dan beside it.
- Order: the cheung fun for the X.O. and the cured pork.
- Order: the trout if there are four of you.
- Avoid: turning up on a Monday. The kitchen is dark.
What locals & experts say
- The MICHELIN inspector, on the yeung yu sang choi bao: it
is a wonder, stuffed with shrimp, green mustard and lettuces, then crisped and presented whole.
2 - Calvin Eng, to Luke Fortney at Eater, December 2021:
I think it's really special when you can eat something and recall a memory that you had recently, or years ago.
1
Good to know
- Where: 398 Manhattan Avenue at Frost Street, in Williamsburg.
- Hours: dinner only, and closed Mondays.
Verdict
should-visit — Forty seats on a corner with a backyard behind it, so book. Drink the cognac. Eng pours five of them in one and two ounce measures, because that is what goes on the table at a big Cantonese dinner.