The Wong Way

Billy Wong's signature flair has found a new home in Chinatown.


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Published: Sep 4, 2007

As soon as Billy Wong walks into Ly Michael's, he's ready. Buu Ly, the owner that recently made Wong a partner in his Chinatown space, is already busy accommodating a last-minute gaggle of pals entering the Asian fusion/Vietnamese restaubar. The beautiful general manager, Tammi Dang, instructs each table in the intricacies of bahn hoi, the art of wrapping stuffed grape leaves and shrimp mousse-covered sugarcane stems in thin rice skin. She talks about how bruising basil and adding fish sauce affects the flavor of pho noodle soup.

Wong orders a Lang Brothers scotch and sits down. "My vision for this place is — as always — to have a good time," says Wong, toying with a sumptuous pepper-coriander-seasoned calamari ring. For him, "a good time" is standard issue — eating, drinking, joshing, hanging around beauties. And most importantly, getting his customers to do likewise.

Wong makes good times. That's his rep. His playboyish reputation precedes him. "I don't do anything I don't feel good about," says Wong, who owned Mustard Greens, Plate and Billy Wong's before throwing in with Ly Michael's, which opened three years ago. But if you ask him, he insists it's nothing but a part he plays. "My line of work is about being fun," he laughs. "Truth is, I don't like to go out."

The Hong Kong-born Wong, who came to Philly by way of Manhattan 28 years ago, began his career in 1989 at at Mustard Greens, which is still going strong off Second and South. (Wong sold it in 2000.) Is Wong a chef himself? Yes. And a good one at that. "But I don't like to cook." he laughs. "I know great food, great trends and what people want."

In other words, it's the intangibles that make him successful. "You can learn about cooking or business, but you can't learn instinct or charisma," says old pal Ly. "That's Billy — the ultimate frontman."

Wong first moved Asian food away from heavy sauces at Tang's, and then at Mustard Greens, throughout the '80s and '90s. He made everything light, fresh and zesty. "Mustard Greens was the greatest," says Wong of the establishment, which he says he sold due to being burned out. "I was ready to retire — until someone showed me [a space] on Second Street. I was hooked."

Just like that, the fusion-driven Billy Wong's was born in an Old City spot that previously housed a Rib-It franchise. (The space has since become Mint.) His rep for great food and times was again bolstered in 2004, when he shot a TV pilot for a show that featured Wong rating gentlemen's clubs from Vegas to Philly. Wong says the project is still under consideration at HBO.

But hospitality was always his strength, even after Plate in NoLibs closed nine months after its 2005 opening. Though Wong loved that project, he didn't want to "do anything half-assed. My silent partners wanted to do something else." Turns out, so did he. Wong had never operated in Chinatown, an area he wants to see expand. "Chinatown never had a lounge or late-night bar to go with food," he says.

Both Ly and Wong were also intrigued by something else right under their noses — the recipes that GM Dang's mother, a Vietnamese émigré, prepared for her daughter for lunch. Dung "Kim" Dang — an at-home chef in her 50s — had never cooked in a restaurant.

"She's one of those chefs who [will] go into a closet and never reveal the recipe," says Ly. Both men took a chance in bringing in Dang as head chef, not only banking on her ability to cook for several hundred patrons a day — dinner and lunch entrées like juicy pork chop rice and lemongrass shrimp in addition to her mighty pho — but on the addition of Vietnamese food, period. Dang's food convinced both men to rejigger Ly Michael's approach to accommodate the cuisine.

Leave it to a woman to give Wong a taste of something delicious.

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

Ly Michael's, 101 N. 11th St., 215-922-2688.