This restaurant offers a lot of Bangkok for your money.
Many places aim to “transport” people to another country, but Bang Bang Bangkok is bringing Thailand to them. The Brooklyn-based fine dining warehouse invites customers to eat their way through the Thai capital without leaving Gotham — thanks to immersive design technology.
In a cheeky twist, Bang Bang is modeled after a bus with windows and benches in which customers sit, and a tourist-worthy visual ride is projected onto the screens surrounding the restaurant, conveying ideas of a stroll around Bangkok.
As a result, bus “riders” are digitally spun around the Thai capital for two hours on a VR ride. Enhancing this sensory stay is Bang Bang’s 10-course tasting menu—roughly a sample for each stop on the tour.
Bang Bang, located at 131 Grand Street in Williamsburg, is the brainchild of Southwestern restaurateur Jay Borin, known for Brooklyn’s Mao Mao and Queens’ Jai Sang Ma.
“I am not in the restaurant business. I’m in the experience business,” Borin, 45, told The Post. “I can refer you to another world.”
To achieve the illusion, the Bangkok native had a film crew film iconic landmarks in his hometown, including its famous market, floating maze, its sprawling Chinatown neighborhood and even alleyways.
He used a technology called projection mapping, in which one turns various objects onto a screen surface for projections – in this case, the interior of the artificial bus. Today, this type of spatial augmentation technology is used to create optical illusions in buildings, in Broadway shows and, of course, in restaurants like his.
With the Bang Bang experience, epicures can almost smell the exotic fish sauce wafting from a night market vendor or feel a jet-lag dizziness as they careen through the neon-drenched streets of the red-light district.
With this new concept, “you don’t need to go to Bangkok or anywhere in the world,” explained Borin, whose goal is to bring the “beauty” of his homeland to NYC.
As for the food, the menu has European deconstructions of Thai classics, such as the Bangkok, a delicious trio of a pork cake filled with coconut foam, a steamed pork dumpling wrapped in cabbage and a cold lobster foam soup lime and a blanched tomato—basically a gazpacho-like riff on Tom Yum soup.
There’s also the Noble: smoked duck with red curry sauce and a delicious lychee puree, among other dressings. Bottles similar to hairspray are used to spray it with lime and thyme.
Before each course, Bang Bang manager Prachak Seniwong an Ayutthaya gives a description of the dishes and the places they are going.
“We’ll take you to the local streets of the old town,” he declared during the start of a recent tour.
Also worth mentioning is the Wisdom, a choice of wagyu marbled beef slices coated in spicy shrimp paste or deep-fried Chilean sea bass (marketing speak for Patagonian toothfish) with chili sauce, baby mustard greens and more .
Patrons top off this culinary decade with a reduction of mango sticky rice — “an iconic Thai dessert” with a hefty dollop of mango sorbet for the original item. It comes with a sticky rice cake and coconut mousse instead of the typical coconut milk.
Total price for two: $357.
Bang Bang joins a growing fraternity of immersive food experiences in NYC that require diners to use more senses than just smell and taste.
They include Le Petit Chef on Broadway, in which a tiny, animated chef “prepares” a tasting menu; Flatiron Dinner Theater Tour Digitally; and Sansan Ramen in Queens, where ladies zoom in from the Philippines to take your order.
Borin intends to return to Bangkok to plan and film a more detailed digital tour, which he expects to unveil at Bang Bang within 12 months.
“If you want to bring people into the real world, then you have to choose from the real thing,” he explained.
Open from 4.30pm to 11pm seven days a week. 131 Grand St., Brooklyn; Bangbangbangkoknyc.com
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Image Source : nypost.com