“I had a person who came from California,” reports Mogan Anthony, who opened the East Village shop with his wife, Seleste Tan. “They said it was cheaper buying a ticket to come here than trying to get us to ship the product over there.”
The cake. Photo: Melissa Hom Lady Wong, a month-old patisserie on East 9th Street, does not generally accept preorders, but the owners will, in certain cases, make exceptions — for example, if you send a screenshot of your plane ticket. This weekend, he’s got a guy coming in from Texas. But if you’re any closer, you’ll have to just show up.
Durian is a fruit of legend. It is football-sized, with a spiky exterior, creamy interior, and — most famously — pungent smell. The fragrance is so strong there is literature devoted to the aroma.
The visible fibers indicate the cake is filled with unadulterated durian. Photo: Melissa Hom Lady Wong’s durian Swiss roll cake costs $48, which is reasonable when you consider that really top-tier durians cost $30 a pound. Tan and Anthony buy their fruit from a specific farmer in Malaysia, who has old trees — durian from old trees is more flavorful than durian from newer trees — and by the time they receive the packages, the fruit has traveled, frozen, almost 10,000 miles.
Despite their backgrounds — he has worked for Jean-Georges Vongerichten; she’s a veteran of wd~50; they met while working at the Four Seasons in Singapore — neither had made kuih before. “It looks so simple, but it’s so hard to nail,” says Tan. They started Lady Wong to get rid of the excess kuih. “You can’t just make one piece; you make a cake and slice it, but how much can we eat?”
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