Hannah Wong is Cooking up a Community

For about a year now, those who’ve flocked to Morningbird, an all-day cafe in Kinderhook, have, at the very least, cast a curious eye toward its breakfast sandwich. “I think it's the perfect sandwich, though I certainly don't expect everyone to agree,” says Chef Hannah Wong, who recently moved to the Hudson Valley from NYC.

Breaking with the grub-standard recipe, Wong’s version has layers of flavor crammed with the Southeast Asian flair for which she is known: a homemade milk bun cradles pork sausage (seasoned with lemongrass, garlic, chilies, and fish sauce) that’s topped with crisped fried egg and heaps of sambal mayo, scallion-and-cilantro chimichurri, and bright greens.

It’s the type of dish that could convince anyone to crave something exciting, something different.

And it’s precisely the type of dish that is bringing a culinary refresh to the region.

Morningbird — just one of three related Kinderhook dining venues helmed by Wong, including The Aviary and The Nest — are part of Kinderhook Knitting Mill, a new venture in the heart of the village housed within a reimagined 19th-century textile mill. In addition to Wong’s restaurants, the Mill comprises a variety of businesses, from an art gallery to a bottle shop to a curated pantry.

The Kinderhook Knitting Mill (KKM) was a dream born during the pandemic, conceived as a community-centered destination that would nourish with food and art. Artist Darren Waterston and restaurateur Yen Ngo (Wong previously worked for Ngo at Van Da, a Vietnamese restaurant in Manhattan that landed on the Michelin Bib Gourmand list) conceived of this restorative framework — the mill has just as much to do with food and art and business as it does people and love and respect.

In many ways, it is a reflection of what was lost during the pandemic, a means for connection — and for restaurant workers like Wong, whose industry became a shell of itself overnight — it marks a new safe haven.

The project’s many parts are primarily owned and operated by women and people of color, resulting in a cultural refresh with a built-in support system, where shared values are the backbone.

For Wong, who’d lived and worked in NYC for over a decade, moving Upstate wasn’t exactly part of the plan. In March of 2020, she was busy putting down roots in Brooklyn, negotiating a lease for a new restaurant space, the cherry on top for any chef, her very own brick and mortar. But like many ventures at the time, the timing itself was ill-fated; she walked away from the lease (an excruciating decision, as Wong describes it) and pivoted during the pandemic, launching pop-ups with fellow restaurants and lending a hand to initiatives like FIG's Food Security Program, which provided queer, trans and BIPOC-centered food access in NYC.

The fact that community would quickly become Wong’s focus is perhaps only surprising to those who’ve never worked in hospitality, who’ve never sat a table, waited a table, cooked for a table, or cleared a table. The pandemic further exposed cracks in the industry: one that has included issues around race, gender inequality, as well as fair labor practices and wage disparities. It was little surprise the industry’s most isolated voices were minority- and women-owned restaurants, who suffered some of the greatest losses during the pandemic — the cards were always stacked against them.

And so you get the sense that Wong has wrought her own reckoning at Kinderhook Knitting Mill, joining and building a space where everyone wants to be on the same page, where an open conversation about equity, safety, and community is front and center.

“When Darren and Yen approached me about joining them at [Kinderhook Knitting Mill], I felt like this project was an opportunity for me to have not just a culinary platform, but a space to continue contributing to the transformation of this industry,” says Wong. In doing so, Wong is helping to reinvigorate an entire village.

It’s a bit of a dream for Wong, who admittedly is lately less drawn to the daily demands of cooking, and more to the opportunity cooking presents. “I'm more interested in using food as a vehicle for my own creativity and as a pathway to staying curious — and again, to facilitate intentional community-building,” she says. “Comradery is a great word for what we're doing here. Part of what makes this specific community we've gathered here special is how multidimensional our interests and skill sets are, which is allowing for a lot of interesting cross-pollination and possibilities for collaboration.”

Like a good recipe, Darren and Yen assembled a range of creatives who’ve opened neighboring businesses, each adding their own flavor to the fold. The mix includes OK Pantry, which stocks anything from curious home goods to hand-picked groceries and hand-made drinks; The Kinderhook Bottle Shop, a thoughtful selection of wines and spirits led by an NYC sommelier; 2 Note, an all-organic and botanical perfumery with bath and body products; and September Gallery, a contemporary art space formerly located in Hudson.

This thoughtful crew has been instrumental in helping Wong settle into her new Upstate life. “It's been a difficult adjustment on a personal level because I moved from a place of incredible diversity, in all senses, to a place with profoundly little diversity,” she says. “It's challenging to interact with people all day and not see myself reflected in the faces or bodies I encounter, or to be able to share some of my lived experiences with people who are local here. Luckily, our KKM family and tentacles have made me feel so welcome and supported, both personally and professionally.”

And these new connections extend beyond the mill’s walls, beyond its in-house community, to the broader network of Hudson Valley purveyors — Wong’s new proximity to farmers alone is proof. “In NYC, restaurants can access high-quality Hudson Valley produce, but in my experience, with few exceptions, these relationships always felt pretty transactional,” says Wong. “We are on our farmers' and purveyors' turfs here, and can invest the time to visit their farms and develop meaningful connections with them in a way that I hope is reflected in the food we serve.” In what will surely be the envy of the town, Wong is moving beyond the transaction, and is currently organizing a farm's dinner to celebrate these farmers, the new friends who work in the pastures and fields to create the very flavors found throughout her menus.

At Morningbird, Wong rekindles its menu weekly, refreshing the usual roster of cafe fare, often using ingredients that build on her penchant for Thai and Vietnamese flavors, but also herbaceous and locally-grown flavors that balance elements ranging from salty to sweet, spicy to sour, and beyond. Expect anything from milk bread toast with coconut pandan jam to duck fat fried rice that uses fresh bok choy from Gentle Time and eggs from Overlook Farm. It’s hard to say no to the delightful rotation of pastries, dreamed up by head pastry chef Karly Kuff, like the signature mochi donut, a refreshing take on the morning staple, that’s freshly fried and has already garnered its own following.

More upscale, The Aviary is a weekend-only restaurant (attached to The Nest, a bar with smaller bites for grazing) closer to a fine dining experience that Wong admits breaks from tradition in that it serves flavors that are just as interesting as they are accessible. Here, her priority is to nourish rather than pamper.

In a nod to the region’s history, you’ll find Dutch influences that are mixed with Indonesian ones in a menu that’s otherwise very farm-forward — ingredients in each dish adapt weekly, carried by the seasons and the “heavy lifting” flavors produced by nearby farmers. “What might be a sungold tomato sauce one week could be a charred green sambal the next, or an eggplant dish might become a pole bean dish,” says Wong. “I've tried to implement dishes on the menu that can flex with different produce and still taste delicious.”

You’d of course be forgiven for just focusing on the food: the delicious flavors, the high-level of execution. But it would be hard to miss the greater context, the surrounding community of businesses working together, an interconnected platform for creatives, and a safe space. It all strikes at the heart of what food is about after all: it’s for people, by people.

Find @morningbirdkinderhook, @theaviarykinderhook and @kinderhookknittingmill in Kinderhook, New York. www.kinderhookknittingmill.com

By Keith Flanagan

Images by Casey Kelbaugh

Volume 9