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Bret Thorn
For Andy Yang, one star has prompted him to reach for others. Yang is founder of Rhong Tiam, a concept offering authentic Bangkok cuisine that recently won recognition from the esteemed Michelin guide as well as a shout-out from The New York Times, prompting Yang to grow it.
But Yang’s direction was not always so clear. Originally, the residential property owner in the New York City borough of Queens had hungered for the food of his native Bangkok and wanted to show New Yorkers how that food was supposed to taste.
So in October 2007 he opened a restaurant near New York University with the difficult-to-pronounce name of Rhong Tiam and the difficult-to-understand slogan of “Bangkok way of cooking.”
Initially, the restaurant sat there, quietly serving food reminiscent of Thailand’s capital to its few customers and slowly gaining attention from the city’s Asian-food cognoscenti. That changed late the following June, when it was featured in the New York Times’ “$25 and Under” section.
The recognition filled up Rhong Tiam, which has an average check of $12 to $15, and Yang turned his attention to Kurve, another restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village. He hired Karim Rashid, who designed Morimoto in Philadelphia, to develop the space, and later brought on celebrity pastry chef Pichet Ong to do the desserts. But the food—chicken laab wrapped in raw wild king salmon; Kurobuta pork belly in a pool of rice porridge—confused customers. The space, with plasma screen televisions displaying wave patterns and a bright pastel color scheme, seemed to many bloggers to resemble an alien spaceship.
He already was offering Rhong Tiam’s food at Kurve during lunch when he got a mysterious e-mail from a michelin.com address. “I asked Pichet if it was a joke, and he said, ‘Call them back!’” Yang recalled.
It turned out that the lauded French restaurant guide, which launched its New York edition in 2006, was giving a star to Rhong Tiam.
Since then Yang has decided to concentrate his energies on expanding that concept. Now Kurve is being reworked into another Rhong Tiam, and Yang also has signed a lease to open a Rhong Tiam in the Princeton, N.J., suburb of Plainsboro. In addition, he is working with the owners of an artists’ space in the Lower East Side called Collective Hardware.
Yang says that while the Michelin star may have brought him some clarity, it was not as important to his business as the Times review.
“It’s more for tourists,” Yang says of the French guide, noting that, given the current economic climate, his business is down just like it is at most restaurants.— [email protected]
