During that time, Buddakan became the fifth highest-grossing restaurant in the country and earned a coveted two stars from the New York Times. Implementing a variety of cooking techniques and ingredients from his travels around China and Southeast Asia, Lon spent five years as the Executive Chef of the iconic Buddakan in NYC. ![]() He traveled to China to participate in the opening of Jean-Georges Shanghai, then went back to New York City to open Jean-Georges’ revolutionary Southeast Asian restaurant, Spice Market. For three years he worked under acclaimed Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten at his flagship restaurant. Here’s how the story goes… Before moving to Denver, Chef Lon spent over a decade in New York City honing his culinary skills. Fittingly, it also includes Chef Lon Symensma’s name, who opened ChoLon in Downtown Denver in 2010, following his extensive culinary travels throughout Asia. Nobody here knows what har kao or siew mai is, but they can tell you what the flavorings inside of pho and summer rolls are.ChoLon translates to “big market” in Vietnamese and is named after the largest Chinese-influenced market in Saigon. Whereas in New York, they know way more about Chinese food than Vietnamese food. There's such a large Vietnamese population here so people know a good amount about that. It's amazing because I spent a lot of time in Vietnam and loving the French colonization of Vietnam and the celebration of different cultures coming together. They know less about Chinese food than they know about Vietnamese food, which is interesting and very unique. Well because of the Vietnamese population, a lot of people know pho and rolls. Have a lot of people had summer rolls when they walk in? We make it with a really nice crab salad and it has roasted and pickled dill peppers, some charred corn, cilantro, scallion, vermicelli noodles, and then we make a sriracha mayonnaise which pulls it all together like a wet crab salad. The summer roll is a traditional Vietnamese fresh roll. There are two Chinese dim-sum houses, there's two really popular sushi restaurants in town. It's literally restaurant after restaurant. There's a street about two miles outside the main downtown part of the city called Federal that's predominantly Vietnamese. Yeah, I do a lot of sous vide cooking back there.ĭoes Denver have a traditional dim sum parlor?Ībout half of the Asian population in Denver is Vietnamese. You can make whatever you want, but as long as you have a flavor profile of a kung pao chicken and you write it on the menu, people will be like "oh, cool, I want that." And then you win them over with the presentation and the taste of the dish. For instance, let's take kung pao chicken. One thing in Denver that I realized is with the verbiage on the menu. How has Denver responded to your cooking? He said that there was an opportunity to go help this restaurant. It was an organized government program - some guy started it and found my friend Robert Danhi, who is a Southeast Asian guru chef and wrote a book called Southeast Asian Flavors. I did some volunteer work in Northern Vietnam for about six weeks, helping a deaf community start a restaurant - where all proceeds went towards buying hearing aids for deaf children. And then I just spent six months in Vietnam, another five months in Singapore, just traveling. I worked at the Datai Resort off the west coast of Malaysia, on a small island called Langkawi. I did dim sum at the Royal Garden Hotel in Hong Kong. I was in Shanghai for a while, opening up Jean-Georges Shanghai. I've lived in Asia, on and off, for about two years. Have you traveled much throughout the region? I really love the French colonization and European influence within the Vietnamese culture. However, for the most part, I tried to go a little more in the Southeast Asian realm. On the patio and in the bar, we're serving things like satays, chicken wings, dumplings, spring rolls. ![]() The "small bite" section is definitely heavy on dumplings, with everything in the that section meant to be eaten with your fingers. I was the chef at Buddakan for awhile, so it would have been silly to neglect dim sum. ![]() Details also just named his one of the Top 10 Best Asian Restaurants in the country. Last year he was up for a James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant and this year Food and Wine nominated him for People's Choice Award for Best Chef in the Southwest. Since opening in 2010, he's won a legion of fans in Denver - and around the country. I'd been on an epic Denver food crawl and wanted to stop into Cholon to visit with the chef, who I've known for around five years, since his time running the kitchen at Buddakan in New York City.
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