When Pom Moongauklang started slashing hours at Pom Pom’s Teahouse & Sandwicheria due to the persistent pandemic-spun employment shortage, she thought hard on ways to recoup the loss.
“We’ve had to cut back our Mondays, Tuesdays and sometimes late-night,” says Moongauklang, owner of the Milk District mainstay. “Anything would be helpful at this point.”
Even better if that help can benefit two businesses at once, and so on Aug. 2, from 5- 10 p.m., Pom’s will be hosting what Moongauklang hopes will be the first of a weekly pop-up series that will feature Orlando food businesses with a range of different end-goals.
First up: Meng’s Kitchen, a ghost kitchen that’s been growing steadily since chef/owner Asawin “AJ” Jockkeaw, COVID-furloughed from his own gig, began taking orders for his Thai-style Hainanese chicken and rice on Facebook.
At first, says Jockkeaw, it was Orlando’s Thai community who took notice of the simple, flavorful dish of poached chicken and jasmine rice cooked in chicken broth with ginger and garlic.
“It’s southeast Asian comfort food you can’t find anywhere else, but it’s everywhere in Thailand,” says the Chiang Mai native. “And by the second week, after a friend helped me set up a new Instagram page, more American people were asking for it.”
With posts and pictures cropping up, word spread, and Jockkeaw landed in a ghost kitchen, filling phone and online orders out of U-Roll Sushi on East Colonial Drive, as well as those from a range of mobile dining apps. The menu has since grown to about 10 dishes, from Five-Spice Roasted Chicken to comforting tom kha gai (Thai coconut chicken soup) to a melt-in-your-mouth braised pork belly laden with spice and served with rice and hard-boiled eggs.
“I am a ghost kitchen, and I have no desire to go brick-and-mortar right now,” says Jockkeaw, whose lengthy resume includes a five-year stint in the Orlando Sentinel cafeteria, “but the pop-up is a great way to expose my cooking to more people.”
It’s the same reason that Red-Eye’s Git-n-Messy Smokehouse partner Chris Poulos is looking at taking a night, maybe more.
“People in Orlando kind of stay in their own sections and normally don’t stray too far,” says Poulos, who just inked a contract to expand the Winter Springs eatery into a stall at Henry’s Depot. He expects to open with a limited menu in October.
“…It’s the prototype for the franchisable concept that (late pitmaster and Git-N-Messy founder) Chuck Cobb and I were talking about months ago.”
A pop-up at Pom’s, says Poulos, “would give us a great sense of whether a franchise would work in that neighborhood. Chuck’s vision was never a big, fancy plaza. It was all about being that corner barbecue shack.”
For V’s Diner food truck partners Mackenzie Singleton and Jarett Dolan, pop-ups are nostalgic, which is why they’re considering a turn at Pom’s even as they work on opening their first brick-and-mortar location.
“Back when we started, there was such a spirit of pop-ups in this town. We were doing them, so were Winter Park Biscuit Co. and Bangrak, and it gave us little entrepreneurs a test market to see if there was interest in what we were doing,” says Singleton, who did similar events in places like Wally’s, Redlight Redlight and Whippoorwill Beer House & Package Store in V’s early days.
“For many of them, we just did it with a tent or even through dinner parties,” he says. “That’s how you make sure you’re not crazy, that it has appeal within the community, and you’ll have support.”
He laughs, imagining starting out in a place like Pom’s.
“On our first one, we packed everything in the car, made three trips, it was raining, it was chaotic,” he says. “To not have any of those issues to start with — to have everything from tables to bathrooms — allows you to focus on the food and the customer experience.”
“For Pom,” says Poulos, “it’s a great way to have people looking for something new week to week.” He likens it to how Git-N-Messy hosts each of its live-music acts once a month. “You want a level of excitement. ‘Hey, who’s going to be at Pom’s this Monday?’ It’s genius.”
Moongauklang, who had a great experience with her own recent Thai pop-up, Pom-Issan, hopes he’s right. And she’s looking for additional businesses — ones with reasonable followings — with which she can partner.
“I had a really great experience, and to showcase something like that in the Milk District was a real treat,” she says, noting that she’s looking forward to giving Jockkeaw a platform to widen his audience. “And if a business is interested in seeing what we do in brick-and-mortar versus a truck or a ghost kitchen … it could be a nice litmus test.”
Find me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram @amydroo or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie. Email: amthompson@orlandosentinel.com. For more fun, join the Let’s Eat, Orlando Facebook group or follow @fun.things.orlando on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
