Inside Kong 2.0: What's to Come at Their Soon-to-Open Spot at Ayala Triangle Gardens

(SPOT.ph) Seeing the fellow with small beginnings step up and take on a bigger role will almost never not be endearing, and we see this at play in the story of Kong. Originally a cozy eight-seater in Salcedo Village, they served Aussie-Asian plates with plenty of personality, all from their tiny kitchen with an underpowered exhaust and no air conditioning (!). Despite the limitations the place presented them with, Kong gained a following of diners who kept coming back for their stir-fried noodles and proteins with Southeast Asian inflections. Still, it had long been the dream of owners Tommy Woudwyk and Ingga Cabangon Chua, as well as Chef Gerard “Gezza” d’Ombrille, to expand the brand and bring the Kong concept to a grander stage.

Seeing the eatery's success, the group decided the time was ripe to invest in a bigger space that would better allow them to execute their ideas. The result? Kong 2.0, their upcoming place at Ayala Triangle Gardens. Slated to open this September, it'll be home to new dishes with the same playfulness and vivid flavors as the OG Kong, but leveled up and gone a touch more refined.

Compared to the Salcedo Village outpost that was had more laid-back offerings in a smaller setting, the soon-to-open Kong 2.0 can be thought of as its all-grown up counterpart—one who’s backpacked around the world a bit more, got promoted to a managerial role, and is eager to share with its long-time fans what more it’s capable of. Central to the new Kong is the central stone counter, which goes by a U-shaped form that puts the chefs at the center of it all. It's a fitting addition: while the food at Kong 2.0 maintains the casual Asian-Australian identity of the OG Kong, they go more complex in approach, with the team utilizing techniques like dry-aging to bring out the best of fish and meats. 

Make no mistake: Kong is all about simplicity. “We want the food to speak for itself,” D'Ombrille tells SPOT.ph. “[We don't use] a lot of garnishes... we just use really top-quality produce. What you see is what you get.” Still, D’Ombrille continues, everything they put out is a “labor of love": curry paste are hand-pounded in mortars and pestles; sauces are mixed in the kitchen; even their noodles are made in-house. 

Asian flavors and ingredients make up the bulk of Kong’s menu, but they more fundamentally draw from the modern iterations of Asian cuisine in D’Ombrille and Woudwyk’s home country of Australia. As the Land Down Under has a diverse migrant population, so, too, is their cuisine a melting pot where these different influences mix and mingle with one another, with sublime (and often, uniquely Aussie) results. D’Ombrille in particular has extensive experience with Southeast Asian cuisines, having trained in Thailand and lived for five years in Indonesia.

Their menu will be short but sweet, Woudwyk tells us, and they'll be frequently changing up their roster so you'll have new things to look forward to regularly. While they're still finalizing the lineup, the team served dishes at a recent preview to show us what Kong 2.0 is all about. There are light bites that are great fuel to conversations: Miang, a ceviche-like one-biter of lapu-lapu dressed in miang kham sauce, cradled by perilla leaves; their take on Som Tam (Thai papaya salad), using snake beans as the main veggie; and tempura-style Fried Tofu, which gets a citrusy, peppery upgrade from a dusting of Mah Kwan pepper.

The Rice Noodle dish highlights its very namesake, which Kong takes the time to make from scratch. The result: chewy cylinders with more springiness than your typical store-bought tteok—a great base to tender strips of beef brisket, sauteed kangkong, and the sweet soy sauce that ties everything together. There, too, is the Fried Chicken, with crispy fillets of the bird over a pool of green curry. Kong makes the curry paste from scratch of course—this classic green variant is just one of the seven (!) kinds of curry they rotate from.

It’s in the dish of Roast Duck that we see really see the 2.0-fication of Kong. To achieve the bird’s moist and flavorful (but not oily!) flesh and crisp-crackly skin, the team treats it like they would Peking duck, which begins by scalding the skin and coating it in maltose vinegar. From there, it’s dry-aged for three days, which helps bring out the flavor of the poultry and dries out the skin in the process. The aged bird is then roasted to medium-rare doneness; to finish, boiling oil is poured over, rendering the skin glossy and next-level crisp. Slices of the duck are served over pickled cukes, with sides of spiced salt and tamarind sauce—a fun variation on the more traditional Chinese plum sauce, which brings subtly sweet, tangy, spiced depth to every bite of the meat.

“Now, Ingga and I are thrilled to share the next evolution of Kong,” says Woudwyk. “Some things have changed. Yes, we finally have air-conditioning and proper ventilation, and a larger space. But the heart of Kong remains the same: casual, engaging, and delicious food that doesn’t cost a fortune.”