Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar. There's a New York story behind Bonnie's, the popular restaurant that opened in Williamsburg in 2022. Bonnie's was opened by Chef Calvin Eng. Eng is a first generation Cantonese American New Yorker, and proud mama's boy. So much so, that he named his restaurant after his mother. Bonnie was 13 years old when she immigrated from southeastern China to New York. She settled into a tiny one bedroom apartment in the heart of Chinatown with her family. Calvin writes in his new cookbook about his memories of visiting that apartment and the walks he'd take with his mother around the various shops, vendors and produce stands.

Even if in the moment he was bored, he says those experiences marked the beginning of Calvin forming his own vision of what it means to be Cantonese American, to cook Cantonese American food. It's why at Bonnie's you can find dishes like Italian combo, fried rice, clam chowder, juk, and of course, always a fruit plate for dessert. The book is called, Salt Sugar MSG: Recipes and Stories from a Cantonese American Home. Chef Calvin Eng is here with me now in studio across the table. Hi, Calvin. Welcome to WNYC.

Calvin Eng: Hello. Thank you for having me.

Kousha: Thank you for writing this book. It got me very hungry. The title of this book is Salt Sugar and MSG. Those are three ingredients that you describe as the most important trio in Cantonese cooking. Why do those flavors blend together so well?

Calvin: I always joke that the combo of all three is the Chinese trinity of seasoning. Everyone always knows about the Chinese trinity, which is ginger, garlic, scallion, which is crucial and very important flavor profiles in Cantonese cooking. It's like similar to the mirepoix of French cooking where it's celery, onions and carrots.

The balance of all three seasonings of salt, sugar, MSG, really help balance out a dish and its flavors. I talk about it in the book where the salt, sugar, MSG, don't have to be so literal. The salt could be soy sauce, it could be fish sauce, the sugar can be honey or maple syrup or maltose, and the MSG can be pure MSG or it could also be tomatoes or mushrooms or things like that.

The combo of all three really help make a dish because Cantonese cooking is very low on acid and heat. It's really just about the balance of those three.

Kousha: That was something I found very interesting in the book, was that you write that each recipe doesn't have to explicitly have sugar, salt, MSG. It's just any ingredient that inhabits those flavors, that combo. Let's talk about your mom for a little bit, Bonnie. You named your restaurant after her. I'm wondering, how did she first decide to take that name as her English name? Do you know?

Calvin: It was given to her by her sister, who also had an Americanized name. Her name was Wendy. Then she decided to pick Bonnie for her, and then it just stuck, and that was that.

Kousha: Oh, funny. What was your mom's reaction when you told her that you were going to name your restaurant after her?

Calvin: She was like, "Really? Me?" Just like an immigrant mom, just unsure and still proud in some way, but just shocked to begin with.

Kousha: That's wonderful. I'm sure that was a great moment for you. Has she eaten at the restaurant? [crosstalk]

Calvin: She's come a bunch. We had a launch party at the restaurant when the book came out on this Tuesday. She came by with the family, so it's good to see her.

Kousha: That's great. Starting a restaurant, I've learned, I imagine, is so difficult. I'm wondering for you, what was the challenge in opening a restaurant that you never would have realized until you actually went through with it?

Calvin: Oh, man. It's definitely the hardest thing I've ever done, because obviously, operating and cooking, you don't realize how easy all of that is until you go through with the build out of a restaurant. Because the space we took over was an office space. There was nothing there before. It was just cubicles. We had to flip this whole space into a full service restaurant with prep space and equipment.

The core of it, obviously on a very, very small budget, all during COVID when everything was impossible to get. Everything was super expensive, everything was over budget. That was definitely a challenging time. That just took up a full year of 24/7 work, essentially.

Kousha: At 27, that's amazing. Was this a dream that you had had forever?

Calvin: I've definitely always dreamed of having a restaurant. That was always a goal of mine. I guess I just wasn't always sure of what kind of restaurant that would be when I just started cooking. The end goal was to always have a restaurant and be part of that, and have that bigger picture and not just cook.

Kousha: Listeners, we're talking with Calvin Eng, who's chef and owner of Bonnie's, a Cantonese American restaurant in Brooklyn. We're speaking about his new cookbook, Salt Sugar MSG, which is out now. We're also taking your calls. Listeners, we want to hear from you.

Any of you out there, Cantonese American, and identify with Calvin's story, maybe Calvin's mom's story, how did you feel about your identity growing up? How has it changed as you've grown? How has food been a bridge between your Cantonese and American parts of yourself? Call or text us now at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC.

Or maybe, and I know there's probably some listeners out there, maybe you've been to Bonnie's, Calvin's restaurant in Williamsburg. Do you have a favorite dish that you've tried there? What did you most enjoy about your meal at Bonnie's? Give us a call at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Let's talk in the book about some of more of your story. When your family moved to New York, they got an apartment on Baird Street, right in the heart of Chinatown. What memories do you associate with that apartment?

Calvin: Oh man. It was literally right in the heart of Chinatown, 55 Bayard. My grandparents lived there for almost 60 years. I grew up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, so it wasn't too far. We spent every weekend going there visiting my grandparents.

That would also be when my mom would go food shopping for the week because she was a stay at home mom. She would do all the grocery shopping, all the cooking. It was just a community and a hub for the Chinese community, specifically Cantonese in Manhattan's Chinatown. I remember bopping around all throughout the streets shopping with her.

She would have specific spots she would go to for dried seafood and fresh fish or produce. It was never just like a one stop shop for her. I spent all day just running around town, running those errands with her and then having dinner with the family, whether it was in the apartment or going out as a family at banquet dinners. It was those moments when I really learned about Cantonese ingredients and those flavors.

Kousha: I don't know if you can point to a specific memory, but are those walks in that produce learning the time where your love for food and your desire to be a chef was awakened? Do you have a specific memory associated with that? Like, "Oh, I want to work with food for the rest of my life?"

Calvin: No. I don't think there's any specific light bulb moment for me specifically, but I just was always gravitated towards the kitchen as a kid, always wanted to hang out there, always wanted to help my mom prep because dinner would always be on the table at 7:00.

I would be home from school at 3:00, and she'd be prepping from 3:00 to 7:00, essentially. I would always just want to hang out there with the Food Network on the background. Then we were in the kitchen just prepping and cooking just to get dinner on the table in time for the family.

Kousha: The Food Network was my exposure to knowing that I liked cooking. Shout out to Good Eats if anyone knows that show. Your family is originally from Taishan, a country in Guangdong province in southeast China. I'd love to know some regionally specific dishes or techniques from there that you grew up with.

Calvin: A lot of the foods that we ate-- Taishan is known as a farming village. It's very poor farming village. A lot of the ingredients and the foods that we worked with were preserved dish, preserved foods and preserved dishes. Whether it's salted fish just to preserve it, or fermented bean curd, just things like that, that were preserved for longevity.

Very, very salty, umami-rich foods that add so much flavor to dishes that I love to use now, and things like shrimp paste. All those things add so much umami and flavor and depth to dishes when used sparingly, which is why I love using them so much.

Kousha: Listeners, if you have a story about Cantonese cooking, Cantonese American cooking, or if you are a Cantonese American and you identify with Calvin's story, or if you have questions for Calvin about his restaurant, Bonnie's in Brooklyn, give us a call. We're at 212-433-9692. We've got our first caller, Dan from Brooklyn on the line. Dan, hey. Welcome to the show.

Dan: Hi. I had some friends who, after Vietnam fell, they opened a restaurant in the village, they call it the Vietnam Village. My friend was an accountant and his wife was a housewife. They were so overwhelmed by the tremendous popularity of it, and they kept it just family staff, but the quality never changed.

Finally, they just became overwhelmed and had to stop. I just wanted to know, how do you avoid stopping when you're doing so well that it becomes less personal, it involves people that are just staff that you hire.

Kousha: How do you deal with the pressure to maintain the same standard, and especially as the restaurant gets more popular? That's a great question. Thanks, Dan. Go ahead, Calvin.

Calvin: I've always been a big systems person. I've always chose to work at places where I would learn how to operate efficiently. Not necessarily learn how to cook, because I think learning how to cook, you can learn that on your own time. You can learn that through experience. You learn that from the flavors that you had growing up.

Learning how to operate a spot is something you can't really learn on your own, and that's what takes experience. I've worked at a lot of places where I was introduced to a lot of ways and efficient ways and smart ways to run a business in a way where you don't have to be there 24/7 physically to get it done. Right now, we have a full staff there at the moment, but I'm here.

Kousha: Clearly, you're here.

Calvin: I deal with so many other things these days that cooking is probably not what I'm doing day-to-day, but the consistency and the quality of it will still be the same as if I were when we first started.

Kousha: It's scaling systems like you said. Dan, fantastic question. Thank you so much. I got a text that I want to read out. I think you'll enjoy this, Calvin. The text reads, "Just looking at Calvin's Instagram page and getting really hungry. Nice shot." Do you want to shout out your Instagram page?

Calvin: My Instagram is @calvinhungry on Instagram. Then the restaurant is @bonnie'sbrooklyn.

Kousha: Listeners, we're talking with Calvin Eng, the chef and owner of Bonnie's, a Cantonese American restaurant in Brooklyn. We're talking about his new cookbook, Salt Sugar MSG, which is out now. We're taking your calls. If you are Cantonese American and identify with Calvin's story, if you want to talk about how you felt about your identity growing up, how food has been a bridge between your Cantonese and American parts of yourself, give us a call.

We're at 212-433-9692. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to dive more into the book. I have a page dog-eared right here for a recipe that I'm very excited to talk about. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

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This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar. We are talking with Calvin Eng, the chef and owner of Bonnie's, a Cantonese American restaurant in Brooklyn. We're also talking about his new cookbook, Salt Sugar MSG, which is out now. Listeners, we're taking your calls. Are you Cantonese American and identify with Calvin's story that we're talking about before the break?

How did you feel about your identity growing up? Or how has food been a bridge between your Cantonese and American parts of yourself? If anyone's been to Bonnie's and wants to shout out a dish, we're here for that too. Give us a call. We're at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Calvin, we've got our next caller on the line. Christine from Brooklyn. Hi, Christine. Welcome to the show.

Christine: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Kousha: Of course.

Christine: My husband's family is from Hong Kong. My background is Irish and German. I have tried to learn some of the signature dishes that we enjoy at special times. The first time I tried to cook turnip cakes was in 2020 when all the restaurants were still closed. I found it very challenging. The first time I actually tried to make that dish, they came out lavender purple because I had bought purple daikon.

I've had some interesting failures where they come out gloppy. I have it down now. I feel like I could still use some tips because it's a particularly challenging dish to get right. That's my question, do you have any tips on making really good turnip cakes?

Calvin: Hey, yes. There's actually a recipe for it in my book. I do a ham and cheese turnip cake basically with country ham and gruyere. Again, the fillings are just all add ins, so you could do whatever you want. The trick to turnip cakes is the water ratio has to be correct.

I always grate my daikon, then I throw salt on it to extract and draw out as much water as possible, like if you're making latkes, a lot of times you have to wring it out. I do the same thing with the daikon after we shred it and add salt. We wring it out in a kitchen towel to remove as much water as possible.

Then you could use that water again. That way you could calculate the proper ratio of daikon to water when you make it. That's what's helpful.

Kousha: Cristine, thank you so much for that call. Good luck with the recipe. It sounds like a really good tip there. We just got another text that I'd like to read. It says, "We first went to Bonnie's because our 22-year-old daughter insisted, and we are absolute Bonnie's fanatics. Thank you for the amazing food." Kira from Brooklyn. Kira, thank you for that message.

Calvin: Thank you.

Kousha: I want to bring up a recipe. My favorite page in this book is page 66. I dog-eared it because it is the recipe for a dish called stuffed golden lava French toast. My heart flutters, Calvin. Can you tell us about this dish a little bit?

Calvin: This is a classic Hong Kong cha chaan teng dish, which is a Hong Kong style diner essentially. There's not that many in the city. This isn't that complicated to replicate or create. It's basically French toast that's stuffed with the duck egg custard that we make, and then it's like battered in egg and gently fried. When you cut into it, it oozes this sweet, luscious velvety duck egg custard that you would get at a dim sum restaurant. Those duck egg custard buns very, very similar inside.

Kousha: Can you get that at Bonnie's?

Calvin: Not right now. We did brunch for a little bit, but we don't do it anymore. We're doing brunch for one day only on March 30th.

Kousha: Oh, okay. Nice.

Calvin: I think it's sold out now.

Kousha: Maybe it'll lead on to more things. It is such a lovely decadent recipe. It really stood out to me in the book. We've got another caller, Jordan from Greenpoint. Jordan, hey, welcome to the show.

Jordan: Hey, thank you for having me.

Kousha: Sure, go ahead.

Jordan: I just wanted to shout out, I live in the neighborhood and Bonnie's is one of my favorite local restaurants. The MSG martini on the menu is absolutely perfection. Thank you.

Calvin: Yes. Glad you like it.

Kousha: What is that drink? Can you talk about it a little bit?

Calvin: We do a couple martinis on the menu. My favorites are dirty martinis when I get martinis. Then our bartender when we opened, he was like, "Let's just add MSG to it. It would just make sense. Umami and salty." I was like, "Yes. That's like a no brainer. Why haven't people been doing this forever?" It just works instead of vermouth, we use a drinking grade Shaoxing wine as well. It really ties it all together and fits with the restaurant.

Kousha: Nice. Jordan, thank you so much for that call. Calvin, I'm interested for you. Was there any dish that you discovered as part of writing this book that stood out to you, or maybe rediscovered, that you felt really great about and then you rediscovered it?

Calvin: No, I don't think anything that we rediscovered essentially. There's definitely a lot of stuff that I learned along the way that I was able to research and dive more into. For example, the roast chicken, roast duck. I've never made a [unintelligible 00:17:55] style roast duck before because you need certain special equipment to do and we don't have that at the restaurant.

It's not something I would necessarily cook at home. It's not an easy thing to whip up. That's why, once I understood those flavors and those ingredients, we decided to do it with the chicken instead because that's more accessible for the home cook. It's much more easy to execute for a weeknight dinner. That's one example.

Kousha: Of many things that you learned along the way. You're talking as well about how to make it accessible for folks at home. You also have a bunch of chef pro tips in the book based on your cooking experience as a chef. I'd like to talk about some. One that stood out to me was securing your cutting board. What does that mean? Why is it helpful?

Calvin: I always make sure my cutting board is secure to the counter when I'm working, whether at the restaurant or at work. All you really need is a damp towel or a damp paper towel to put underneath. It glues your board in place so it's not sliding around your counter while you're working, because that last thing you want is a board running away from you while you're slicing or chopping.

Kousha: Sure. Then there is also labeling everything in your kitchen. Can you talk about that?

Calvin: I label literally everything, whether it's perishable or not. It's just habit at this point. We label everything at the restaurant with what it is and the date, so that way we know which product is used first and what's what. Especially when you put things in the refrigerator, the freezer sometimes you can't tell what it is anymore once it's frozen. It's important to label things just so you know exactly what you have and when you put it in there.

Kousha: Listeners, we're talking with Calvin Eng, who's chef and owner of Bonnie's, a Cantonese American restaurant in Brooklyn. We're talking his new cookbook. It's titled Salt Sugar MSG, which is out now. We are taking your calls.

If you're a Cantonese American and identify with Calvin's story, or you love Cantonese American cooking, or if you've been to Bonnie's and have a favorite dish you want to highlight, or if you have a question for Calvin, call or text us now.

We have time for just a couple more calls. It's 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Another part of the book, Calvin, that really stuck out to me was the piece about rice. I am Persian American, food has been a great way for me to connect with my heritage, and rice is a huge part of that. That really resonated with me when I was reading the book.

Growing up, you write that your mom always told you, "Finish your rice or you'll have an ugly wife." I don't know how true that is, but can you talk maybe about what role rice played on your family's table growing up?

Calvin: Rice was just a staple. No matter what we were eating, rice was always a part of it. It could be American food, Italian food, we got rice on the table as well.

Kousha: Same.

Calvin: It's one of those things where we never had a rice cooker growing up. We always used a pot. My mom didn't even really measure. She just knew how much water to rice by using her fingertip, that kind of thing. For me, I use a measuring cup. I still measure, but it was a staple.

Jasmine rice was a staple. In the basement, we always had a massive, massive barrel filled with four bags. Four bags of big bags of rice, that's 100 pounds of rice, a backup rice. Then the kitchen, we have the in-use 25 pound bag of rice. Always it was 100 plus pounds of rice at all times in the household.

Kousha: Was it in a burlap bag like in my house or the one upstairs?

Calvin: Yes, classic.

Kousha: The classic burlap bag. Talk to me a little bit about the crucial steps to making the perfect pot of rice without a rice cooker, as you said.

Calvin: It really is about rinsing the rice and washing the rice till it runs clear under cold tap water. I always use a fine mesh strainer. I find that to be the easiest way. You just throw your rice in the fine mesh strainer, run it under the cold tap until it runs clear. That way you have the perfect ratio, because the ratio is very important when you're cooking rice.

Then that way you're not losing too much water, you're not losing too much rice, you don't have too much water in there and then you just cook it based on the manufacturer's instructions with the cooker or if not on the stovetop. For me, it's always one to one volume, not by weight. If it's one cup of rice, that's one cup volume of water.

Kousha: That's good heuristic to use. It's very easy to remember. We've got another text. Brian from Windsor Terrace here, "Huge fan of Bonnie's. The must try dish is their elevated spin on the McRib. I honestly can't believe it hasn't come up yet. Delicious, decadent. Perfect. Thanks." Talk to me about, not the McRib, but what Brian is calling the McRib here. Thanks, Brian.

Calvin: We opened the restaurant with the char siu rib, and that's always been the number one seller since we opened. It still is today. Originally, I didn't want to have a pork sandwich on the menu because I grew up in Bay Ridge. I had a lot of friends who couldn't eat pork. I was like, "I should probably do something else."

Then we did have a large variety of other dishes, so we ended up just doing that that pork dish. With the classic char siu marinade, char siu glaze with Chinese hot mustard. It has that horseradishy nose pungentness, bread and butter pickles, raw onions on a milk bun.

Kousha: That's beautiful. We got time for just one more call. I'm going to go to Lizzie in Brooklyn. Lizzie, hi. Welcome to the show. You've got about 30 seconds. Go ahead. What's your story?

Lizzie: I'm Cantonese American. I grew up in New Jersey, but both my parents are from Chinatown in Manhattan. Unfortunately, I lost both of them recently. Cantonese American food, it just ties me to them. It's so important to me. Unfortunately, I never learned how to cook it growing up. I'm really looking forward to checking out this cookbook, to coming to Bonnie's, and just staying as close to my heritage as I can into that deep connection to my parents and my family.

Kousha: Oh, Lizzie, thank you so much for sharing that. I'm sorry for your loss. I totally get how the food can be a bridge. For a lot of folks, it can be tough if you maybe don't have folks to go to that can give you the recipes that are from your family. Lizzie, we really appreciate that call. Thank you. I'm going to turn it to you, Calvin, as we close out here. For somebody like Lizzie, what is a way to start engaging with the cooking of your heritage?

Calvin: I think this book has a lot of classics as well. Of course, there's new inventions and very unique, different things that haven't necessarily been seen before, but end of the daily, ingredients and the flavors will definitely tie you back to your childhood.

Kousha: Lizzie, thank you so much for that call. We've run out of time. Let me say thanks to Calvin Eng, the chef and owner of Bonnie's, a Cantonese American restaurant in Brooklyn. His new cookbook is out. It's called Salt Sugar MSG. Calvin, thanks a lot for hanging out with us.

Calvin: Thank you.

Kousha: Thank you all so much for your calls. There is more All Of It on the way. Coming up, we're going to talk to Terri Lyne Carrington, a Grammy Award winning drummer, composer and producer.