Horse & Tiger Is Serving Cambodian-American Comfort Food at Fort Greene

“I love the American culinary sense, so I just wanted to make something that’s Cambodian in essence, but make it very American,” says chef Viruth Cheng. When he launched Horse & Tiger out of the kitchen at Fort Greene last April, he knew that he wanted to make it a personal experience.

Cheng’s family arrived in the United States in 1981, having sought asylum following the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia. After briefly living in San Francisco, Cheng’s paternal uncle offered to get his father a factory job in Denver.

The family made the move, and Cheng’s mother found work in a local Thai restaurant. By the age of twelve, Cheng was enlisted as a dishwasher and rapidly worked his way through the kitchen, picking up basic knife skills and flavor-building techniques.

In 1992, the family moved to Mitchell, South Dakota, where they stayed for about fifteen years. Cheng spent his high school and college years working in kitchens, including at his uncle’s restaurant and at a Chinese buffet that his parents opened around 1996 and operated for almost nine years. Once the kids were grown, most of the family moved back out west, and Cheng returned to Colorado. Because of their culinary upbringing, Cheng says his three siblings are also excellent cooks.

Cheng originally connected with Fort Greene owner Eleanor Cheetham through the Koi & Ninja Collective, the bar’s previous kitchen residency, where he worked with chef Davis Yenh. Once Cheng and Yenh parted ways, Cheetham reached out to propose a new opportunity with Cheng at the helm. Despite having a full-time job as an engineer at Xcel Energy, Cheng decided to take on the task of running the kitchen — at least temporarily.
Before long, Cheng assembled a small team. He is head chef, handling prep work, administrative tasks and recipe development. Donavin Nevarez, the eldest son of his girlfriend, Shonna Nguyen, and a neighbor, Devon ‘D” Bunton, run the kitchen for service. With the added help and a positive response from guests, Cheng has been able to sustain a presence in the bar far beyond his original expectations.

Horse & Tiger is named after the Chinese horoscope signs of Cheng and Nguyen's sons. He says that according to Chinese astrology, the horse and tiger have very playful, business-like compatibility, so it seemed to be a natural fit.

For the current menu, Cheng says he wanted to evoke the flavors of “hanging out in Cambodia” by applying Southeast Asian street-food style to American blue-collar sensibilities. He pulled influences from the comfort food of his childhood — savory flavors like soy and garlic, a touch of sour, an emphasis on freshness, and an earthy quality. “I wanted people to be comfortable with the food that I provide,” he notes.
He describes num pang, the Cambodian word for sandwich, as similar to a Vietnamese banh mi but with a tangier, more pickled salad loaded with garlic and ginger. Horse & Tiger’s num pang is filled with char sui chicken thigh and is served on a kaiser bun that is pressed for a crunchy texture. To round out the flavor, Cheng uses Cambodian-American hot sauce from his cousin Allen Prom’s brand, Yeak Inc.

The Thai-influenced fried rice is seasoned with a soy-garlic sauce and incorporates crunchy bean sprouts, julienned fresh greens, carrots, cilantro and lime. The dish is vegetarian, but diners can opt to add chicken or sliced sirloin.

Cheng says the hardest dish to perfect was the mee chay noodles. In Cambodia, pumpkin noodles, which have a similar taste and texture to egg noodles, are one of his favorite dishes, but most purveyors in the U.S. do not sell them, he explains. After a lot of trial and error, Cheng found a vegetarian noodle made of carrot, spinach, potato and amaranth — it is “super colorful, and it tasted much lighter, and it had a really good sweetness to it,” he says.

Horse & Tiger’s selections also pair well with Fort Greene’s bar program, which includes nineteen beer and cider selections, eleven specialty cocktails, wine, sake and N/A options.
“The Night Queen has been kind of my base,” Cheng explains, referencing Fort Greene’s gin-based cocktail with ginger, peach and lemon. “It has a very fresh, summer taste, and with us being Southeast Asian food, I kind of catered my meal toward that, and then everything else followed.” Cheng finds that there’s synergy in the simplicity of it all. “Beer. Sandwich. Fried Rice. Light drink. That’s how I thought of it.”

Cheng says Horse & Tiger fits well at Fort Greene because of the inclusive and welcoming environment. “Eleanor is one of the greatest people I’ve ever met in my life, and she’s super supportive,” he says. Patrons visiting the bar can expect local DJs, singing, dancing and special events alongside the delicious food and drinks. “If you’re looking for an off-the-wall kind of random night just to enjoy conversation, Fort Greene is the place to come.”

Fort Greene is located at 321 East 45th Avenue. Horse & Tiger is open at the inside window from 5 to 10 p.m. Wednesday through Thursday and 5 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. For more information, visit fortgreenebar.com and horsentiger.com, or follow @horsentiger on Instagram.