Restaurant has optical illusion seating, taking diners on a trippy bus tour of Bangkok — without leaving NYC
This restaurant offers a lot of Bang-kok for your buck.
Many venues aim to “transport” people to another country, but Bang Bang Bangkok is bringing Thailand to them. The Brooklyn-based fine-dining depot invites customers to eat their way around the Thai capital without leaving Gotham — thanks to immersive projection technology.
In a trippy twist, Bang Bang is modeled after a bus with windows and benches on which customers sit, and a travelogue of tourist-worthy footage is projected onto wrap-around screens inside the restaurant, conveying the ideas of a jaunt through Bangkok.
As a result, bus “riders” digitally whiz around the Thai capital for two hours on a VR voyage. Enhancing this sensory sojourn is Bang Bang’s 10-course tasting menu — approximately one sampling for each stop on the tour.
Bang Bang, located at 131 Grand Street in Williamsburg, is the brainchild of serial restaurateur Jugkrwut “Jay” Borin, known for Brooklyn’s Mao Mao and Jai Sang Ma in Queens.
“I don’t do the restaurant business. I do the experience business,” Borin, 45, told The Post. “I can refer you to another world.”
To achieve the illusion, the Bangkok native had a team film iconic landmarks in his hometown, including its famed, labyrinthine floating market, its extensive Chinatown neighborhood and even alleyways.
He used a technology called projection mapping, in which one turns various objects into a display surface for projections — in this case, the faux bus interior. Today, this type of spatial augmentation tech is used to create optical illusions on buildings, at Broadway shows and, of course, in restaurants like his.
With the Bang Bang experience, epicures can almost smell funky fish sauce wafting up from a night market hawker or feel a jet-lag daze while careening around the neon-bathed 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 motherland to NYC.
As for the eats, the menu has European-inflected deconstructions of Thai classics, like the Bangkok, a trio of tasty treats featuring a pork tart dolloped with coconut foam, a steamed pork dumpling wrapped in cabbage and a cold lobster soup with lime foam and a blanched tomato — essentially a gazpacho-like riff on Tom Yum soup.
There’s also the Noble: smoked duck with red curry sauce and a tangy lychee purée, among other accouterments. Hairspray-like bottles are used to spritz it with lime and thyme.
Ahead of each course, Bang Bang manager Prachak Seniwong an Ayutthaya gives a spiel on the dishes and locales they’re passing.
“We’re going to take you to the local streets of Old Town,” he declared during a recent tour’s start.
Also worth mentioning is the Wisdom, a choice of marbled wagyu beef slices anointed with pungent shrimp paste or deep-fried “Chilean sea bass” (marketing speak for Patagonian toothfish) with chili sauce, baby mustard greens and more.
Patrons complete this culinary decathlon with a redux of mango sticky rice — an iconic Thai dessert — with a mango sorbet pinch-hitting for the genuine item. It comes with a sticky rice cake and coconut mousse instead of the typical coconut milk.
The total price tag for two: $357.
Bang Bang joins a growing fraternity of immersive NYC food experiences 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 “preps” a tasting menu; the Flatiron’s digitally enhanced dinner theater Journey; and Sansan Ramen in Queens, where hostesses Zoom in from the Philippines to ring up 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 the people to the real world, then you have to choose from the real thing,” he explained.
Open 4:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week. 131 Grand St., Brooklyn; Bangbangbangkoknyc.com
