Mogan Anthony and his wife, Seleste Tan, opened Lady Wong in New York City’s East Village in February 2022. The boutique serves Southeast Asian pastry and kuih (the Indonesian term for bite-size desserts) and is “truly a love letter of Nanyang flavors,” referring to the culinary heritage from the southern coastal regions of China. Last fall they opened a second location, in Times Square, and they’re soon opening a third. In addition to his co-ownership at Lady Wong, Anthony is the culinary director at five Westchester, New York-based restaurants and one in Fairfield County, Connecticut. In this edition of Voices In Food, he looks back at what led to the shops’ openings, the hesitancy about Asian desserts and what it means to bring these flavors to New Yorkers and beyond.
In 2021, I had some time on my hands as my restaurants were operating under limited circumstances during the pandemic. During the Chinese New Year, we were missing the flavors of home (Malaysia). Seleste started baking some of the pastries we grew up eating and we started giving them out to neighbors. Then we got a little more ambitious, put up our offerings on Instagram, and had pop-ups at various locations. We were getting interest from all over the city — those who were familiar with what she was making and also missing the flavors of their countries, as well as those who wanted to try something new, or what they had been exposed to in their travels.
Anti-Asian sentiment had definitely ramped up. We were fortunate in that none of it was directed toward us, but we were very aware of what was happening in areas such as Chinatown. There were people who didn’t even want to go into the city at that time out of fear. A great number of people were in a bad place — livelihoods had been taken away, people couldn’t get home to see their families, communities were suffering losses. We don’t know if people supported us as a way of supporting Asian-run businesses, or as a mom-and-pop…
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