Mona Sang

Cambodian American chef and restaurant owner in Chicago cooking Khmer dishes learned from her mother.

Creator details
Also known as	Chef Mona Sang
Roles	Chef
Based in	United States
Subjects	Food & Foodways; Migration & Diaspora; Family & Intergenerational Life

Mona Sang is a Cambodian American chef who runs the Cambodian restaurants Khmai and Kaun Khmai in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. Her menus pair Khmer dishes she learned from her mother with her own modern preparations.

Career

Sang first learned to cook while working as a cashier at a gyro restaurant, where she watched her coworkers. She then spent about seven years cooking in the Lettuce Entertain You group, as a caterer at its Ivy Room event space, where she received culinary training. She was laid off there during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the pandemic she and her mother launched Mona Bella Catering in the kitchen of Living Water Community Church in Rogers Park. Sang learned the family recipes by cooking with her mother and memorizing them rather than writing them down. She began with prahok ktiss, a dip of ground pork, fermented fish paste and kroeung, and went on to dishes such as somlor kari and samlor korko. She posted photographs of the food on Instagram and offered a different weekly delivery menu each Monday. The catering menu mixed Khmer dishes such as chha trop dott, grilled eggplant stuffed with ground pork, with Khmer-Western dishes such as kroeung-and-miso-braised short ribs and a lemongrass burger. The business grew from small orders to parties and a wedding.

Khmai

A beef dish with roasted bone marrow at Khmai.

After nine months of catering, Sang and her mother opened Khmai Cambodian Fine Dining at Howard Street and Ridge Avenue in Rogers Park in late June 2022. In September 2022, WTTW called it only the second Cambodian restaurant then open in Chicago. The restaurant served two or three customers a day at first and 100 a day six months after opening. The menu changed every week, and her mother's egg rolls were served as Mai's Eggrolls.

In early 2024 the restaurant moved to a second location and took the name Khmai. As of June 2024, Khmai and a new casual sister restaurant, Kaun Khmai, were set to open in mid-June at 6580 North Sheridan Road, across from Loyola University Chicago. Khmai keeps the traditional dishes her mother taught her, while Kaun Khmai serves Cambodian street food and gives Sang room to try new recipes. As of 2025, Khmai offered a seven-course tasting menu on Fridays and Saturdays, by reservation, and Kaun Khmai took walk-in customers.

Sang is executive chef of Khmai Fine Dining and has cooked professionally in the Chicago area for about a decade. Her modern dishes include tamarind chicken wings and a lemongrass-marinated skirt steak with kroeung butter on French bread. She pounds her kroeung, a paste of lemongrass, galangal, garlic, shallots and turmeric, in a mortar and pestle, and uses it in stews, marinades and a sea bass grilled in banana leaves. Khmai also offers an introductory format that uses modern techniques to introduce Khmer cuisine to younger diners and first-time guests. Its province-based tasting journeys include a seven-course menu on Ratanakiri in northeastern Cambodia, built on forest herbs, fresh fish, gathered vegetables, cashews and coffee.

Murals of apsara dancers, paintings and furnishings tell stories about Cambodian culture and the restaurant's origins, and staff learn Cambodian greetings. Sang says the restaurant is meant to teach people about Cambodian culture and food, and to share the history of Cambodian people in the United States, including the genocide.

Recognition

Sang was a James Beard semifinalist.

Works

• Prahok Ktis (recipe) (Recipe)

See also

• Khmai Cambodian Fine Dining
• Khmai
• Kroeung
• Prahok
• All creators

References