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.