The 20-Seat Cambodian Room You Can't Walk Into
Chakriya Un's Crown Heights debut is one of the few Cambodian restaurants in New York, three nights a week, twenty seats, and Resy roulette to get in.
The walls are lime green. Not sage, not chartreuse — a full acid lime that would look aggressive anywhere else and here just reads like someone made a decision. A$AP Rocky is playing at a volume that suggests the room is a party first and a restaurant second. The bathroom sign is made of plastic rhinestones. Twenty seats, an open kitchen, and a bone-in pork chop coming out of it that tastes like nowhere else in New York.
Bong is Chakriya Un's first permanent restaurant, grown out of her Kreung pop-up. It opened in 2025 on Sterling Place with twenty seats, and has spent the months since as one of the harder tables in Brooklyn to sit at. There are almost no Cambodian restaurants in New York. This one is worth the Resy pain.
Editorial Deep
Order the bone-in pork chop. It's the dish everyone writes about and it deserves the attention — it runs more tender at the bone than at the center, but the char and the seasoning do more work than the doneness undoes. The fried shrimp with sticky mango sauce is the second thing to lock in: crisp shells sitting in tart pools of a sauce that reads sweet at first and turns sharp on the finish. Tamarind clams and the crispy fish round out the greatest-hits order for two.
Twenty seats, lime-green walls, an open kitchen, hip-hop at a volume that assumes you came to have fun. There are a few bistro tables on the sidewalk patio in warm weather. The art on the walls is personal rather than curated, the rhinestone bathroom signage is a choice, and the whole thing feels closer to a friend's dinner party than a restaurant chasing a rating.
Service is warm and menu-fluent — servers explain the Cambodian dishes without the performative reverence that usually attends this kind of cooking in New York. Pacing is generous, which the twenty-seat room can afford.
The check is fair. Sixty-five a head for cooking you cannot get in another New York dining room is a fair trade, and the ceiling is set by what you order rather than a tasting menu the kitchen forces on you.
Yes, when the Resy gods allow it. This is a three-or-four-times-a-year restaurant for anyone who lives in the borough and a once-a-year pilgrimage for anyone who doesn't. The cooking is distinctive enough to build a night around, the room is a genuinely good time, and the alternative — Cambodian food this personal, in New York — largely doesn't exist.
What to eat
Don't miss.
Bone-in pork chop; fried shrimp with sticky mango sauce; tamarind clams; coconut or mango gelato
“One of the few Cambodian rooms in New York, and worth every refresh it takes.”
Book it when the slot appears and don't overthink the order — the pork chop, the shrimp, and one more shared plate lands the meal. If Resy stays locked, Kreung-style Cambodian pop-ups around the city are the closest substitute, but there is no true peer.
The Verdict
