This restaurant offers a lot of Bangkok for your money.
Many eateries aim to “transport” people to another country, but Bang Bang Bangkok brings Thailand to them. The Brooklyn-based foodie depot invites customers to eat their way through the Thai capital without leaving Gotham — thanks to immersive projection technology.
In a trippy twist, Bang Bang is designed to resemble a bus with windows and benches for customers to sit on. Inside the restaurant, a travelogue with tourist-worthy footage is projected onto wraparound screens, giving the impression of a jaunt through Bangkok.
For two hours, bus drivers will digitally whizz through the Thai capital on a virtual journey. This sensory excursion is further enhanced by Bang Bang’s 10-course tasting menu – approximately one sample per stop on the tour.
Bang Bang, 131 Grand Street in Williamsburg, is the brainchild of serial restaurateur Jugkrwut “Jay” Borin, known for Mao Mao in Brooklyn and Jai Sang Ma in Queens.
“I’m not in the restaurant business. I’m in the experience business,” Borin, 45, told the Post. “I can take you to another world.”
To achieve the illusion, the Bangkok native had a team film famous landmarks of his hometown, including the famous, labyrinthine floating market, the sprawling Chinatown district and even individual alleys.
He used a technology called projection mapping, which involves turning various objects into a display surface for projections—in this case, the mock bus interior. Today, this type of spatial augmentation technology is used to create optical illusions on buildings, at Broadway shows, and of course, in restaurants like his.
During the Bang Bang experience, foodies can almost smell the strange fish sauce wafting from a street vendor at the night market, or feel dizzy from jet lag as they speed through the neon-lit streets of the red light district.
With this new concept, “you don’t have to travel to Bangkok or anywhere else in the world,” explains Borin, whose goal is to bring the “beauty” of his home country to New York.
As for the food, the menu offers European-inspired deconstructions of Thai classics like the Bangkok, a trio of delicious treats consisting of a pork tart with a dollop of coconut foam, a steamed cabbage-wrapped pork dumpling, and a cold lobster soup with lime foam and blanched tomato—essentially a gazpacho-like take on tom yum soup.
There’s also the Noble: smoked duck with red curry sauce and a spicy lychee puree, to name a few accompaniments. Hairspray-like bottles are used to spray it with lime and thyme.
Before each course, Bang Bang manager Prachak Seniwong from Ayutthaya gives a short introduction to the dishes and restaurants they pass.
“We will guide you through the streets of the old town,” he explained at the beginning of a recent tour.
Also worth mentioning is the Wisdom, a choice of marbled Wagyu beef slices smeared with spicy shrimp paste, or deep-fried “Chilean sea bass” (marketing jargon for Black Hake) with chili sauce, baby mustard greens and more.
Guests round off this culinary decathlon with a reimagining of mango sticky rice – an iconic Thai dessert – using mango sorbet as a substitute for the original, along with a sticky rice cake and coconut mousse instead of the usual coconut milk.
The total price for two: $357.
Bang Bang joins a growing group of immersive dining experiences in New York that engage guests with more senses than just smell and taste.
These include “Le Petit Chef” on Broadway, where a small, animated chef “prepares” a tasting menu, the digitally enhanced dinner theater “Journey” in the Flatiron, and “Sans Ramen” in Queens, where hostesses from the Philippines are brought to your order via Zoom.
Borin intends to return to Bangkok to plan and film a more detailed digital tour, which he hopes to unveil at Bang Bang within 12 months.
“If you want to bring people into the real world, you have to choose the real thing,” he explained.
Open daily from 4:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. 131 Grand St., Brooklyn; Bangbangbangkoknyc.com
