Comfort from Kong

After dispensing with a few last-minute provisioning questions - where to source the "sky-facing peppers" that heat up Hong Kong's street food; how to get a customized slip tucked into the fortune cookies - the restaurant called Kong opened with a bang last week, strings of firecrackers dancing on the sidewalk on Second Street at Fairmount Avenue.

It is said to be an interpretation of the dai pai dongs, open-air food stalls once ubiquitous (now few and far between) on the crowded outdoor shopping streets of Hong Kong.

So there is a distressed, gray concrete wall tattooed with historic Chinese graffiti, a mural of the lawless Walled City that stood (until it was demolished in 1993) in adjoining Kowloon, and dangling birdcages of bamboo ("easily available on the Internet," noted executive chef Michael O'Halloran, unlike the hard-to-track-down hot peppers).

There's a touch of street cred about the enterprise: O'Halloran's wife and co-owner, lawyer Sophia Lee, has extended family in Hong Kong, and the couple has visited the former British colony often. (Her mother, Ping Suet Chiu, a Hong Kong emigre who was recently making ice cream for the Franklin Fountain in Old City, now helps out as an informal adviser and as the haggler-in-chief in procurement smackdowns with Asian distributors.)

For all that, there are some missing ingredients here: The salt and pepper softshell crab with roasted Sichuan chile ($14), a dish of battered crab, salad greens, and those aforementioned chile peppers, arrived blandly one evening, missing the peppers.

And there are other dishes that could use work, notably the barbecued pork spare ribs (too gooey with sweet sauce), and the buns (too cakey) stuffed with tasty, braised beef short rib and braised shred of Peking duck leg.

But when Kong is cooking, it's just pure fun: My wife and I gobbled down a dim-sum plate of candylike deep-fried asparagus spears with hoisin dipping sauce ($5). Moments later, we demolished a bowl of stir-fried egg with crab, asparagus, lap cheong and rice ($8), which appears to be big with the staff as well.

How in the world do you get it so silky, fruity, aromatic, and crunchy at the same time? I asked O'Halloran, who is continuing to operate his estimable Bistro 7 in Old City.

Well, here's how. First you render a dice of sweet-salty lap cheong pork sausage in a wok. Then when it releases its oil, toss in a little crabmeat, thin-sliced asparagus, and cooked jasmine rice (to air it out). At the end, the beaten eggs go into the sizzle, requiring only two turns of the spatula before they're removed to finish cooking in the serving bowl.

This is just cheeringly good comfort-food eating. As are the crispy Mongolian lamb dumplings with pine nuts and pickled eggplant (though other dumplings could use thinner skins); and the noodle bowl of meltingly tender forever-braised (well, 11 hours, actually) lamb with fragrant five-spice broth ($15).

The last restaurant to occupy this space in Northern Liberties also had "forever braised" meats, but of the Italian persuasion - memorably slow-roasted pork shoulder, seasoned with garlicky fennel and Calabrian chile spice over white beans flecked with pancetta. (Let us not forget its dreamy gnocchi, or feather-light tortellini dumplings stuffed with poached chicken and prosciutto.)

Its name was Sovalo, the project of Joseph and Karey Scarpone, who once worked together at Tra Vigne, the storied Cal-Ital dining room in Napa Valley's wine country. And in the warm, soothing glow of its amber light, I had many of my favorite dinners in Philadelphia.

So Kong's harder soundtrack and distressed walls, its unclothed tables and more rustic offerings, may take getting used to. O'Halloran is still defining the vibe: The food is not fusion, he says. Nor is it precisely classic dim-sum.

On the scale of other Asian street-food places in the city, it's not Penang, either, with its skewered satays, or a Vietnamese hoagie joint in South Philly, or Chifa, the polished Chinese-Peruvian place with exquisite steamed buns.

We shall see what it becomes - a squat golden Buddha sagely observing the scene from an alcove. It may not evoke, exactly, the teeming streets of Hong Kong. But there are other scenarios here - grabbing steamed butter lettuce with chilled wine at the bar, squeezing in with friends around the communal table in the Walled City room, having a late-night beer and dumplings at a sidewalk table.

Last weekend, young dancers from the Philadelphia Suns performed the ritual Chinese lion dance at the door to dispatch evil spirits.

Sovalo, for all its fierce dedication, foundered at this address. Let us hope that with the blessing of the lion dancers, Kong's future will be brighter - and its luck more abundant.

702 N. Second St.

215-922-5664 EndText