making your wildest dreams come true with munzzy uddin + harvey wong
How Brooklyn restaurant The Monkey King shows us that, no matter what, you will always figure it out
Before The Monkey King, Harvey Wong worked in auditing at PWC before quitting to take a break and travel across Asia solo. When he returned, he realized that he wanted to pursue a career in the restaurant industry. So he took up various odd jobs, despite his parents' disapproval, with the goal of gaining as much knowledge and experience as possible—something he hoped would eventually benefit him in the restaurant industry.
Munzerin (Munzzy) Uddin always dreamed of attending culinary school and becoming a chef, but her parents were against it. So she too, initially followed the safe path—studying nanoengineering, with a focus on sustainable and renewable energy, and joining a semiconductor company in North Carolina after graduation.
With the dream of one day owning her own restaurant, she hoped to work her way up the corporate ladder and save enough money to make her dreams come true.
But when she turned 25, she felt that her career, which had progressed rapidly, had stagnated and felt unfulfilled. So, just two years after Harvey, she quit her job without a safety net or a game plan and threw herself into the unknown.
As the eldest children of immigrants, Harvey and Munzzy felt incredible pressure to make money, not take risks and navigate societal and parental expectations. But they knew they had everything within them to make all her wildest dreams come true.
So in December 2019, they said yes to their dreams and signed the lease on a restaurant space in Brooklyn. And then the reality of opening a restaurant amidst a pandemic, construction delays, funding shortfalls and pivot after pivot showed them just what they were capable of.
Making their dreams come true.
Munzzy Uddin and Harvey Wong are the founders of Brooklyn restaurant, The Monkey King, an homage to family traditions & food memories of children of immigrants that grew up in NYC.
And this is how Munzerin (Munzzy) Uddin and Harvey Wong created a symbol of hope that dreams can come true from nothing.
How did your paths cross?
Munzzy: In 2019, I reached out to a mutual friend about coming back to New York City and talked about my goals. I'd worked in the hospitality industry for a while but never took it seriously as a career. I just wanted to get to the next level of management and learn what it would take to open up my own restaurant.
He suggested I connect with Harvey, whom I knew from our time in college at SUNY Albany. At that time, his dad had just opened their second restaurant in the Lower East Side, Kings Co., which was widely acclaimed and had just received a Bib Gourmand.
It's funny because I had just started this journey, and Harvey had already had two years on me. I remember him saying this path is lonely and that it was refreshing for him to find another individual on the same path of self-discovery—someone with the same perspective and mentality of wanting to unlock their truest potential.
We bonded over the pressure of being children of immigrants, needing to make money, being the oldest, going against the grain, quitting our corporate jobs, and trying to pursue our dreams to make it happen, all while dealing with all the obstacles that come with it—societal expectation, our parents' disappointments.
Where did the idea of The Monkey King come from?
Harvey: The concept of the Monkey King has been in my mind for almost 10 years. It's the realization of all my dreams. I come from a restaurant family. I've grown up in a restaurant my entire life, so finding my way back to it was important. The Monkey King is, in so many ways, my homage to the struggles of me—of us—being Asian Americans.
Assimilation was a big part of my life growing up in the 90s, especially in New York City. I was trying to become more American and be less of where I came from. I denied my own culture for a long time.
I grew up learning about heirlooms, especially in European cultures, being handed down. And I would look at that and think, "We don't have any of that stuff—we don't have a crest. We don't have some sort of jewelry or symbol that represents what our family is known for." And that always sat in the back of my mind.
Through The Monkey King, we’ve been blessed enough to rediscover our identities, learn more about ourselves through our work, and realize that hard work and perseverance are our heirloom—our badge of honor. That's been one of the most rewarding things so far.
So how did you start?
Munzzy: We started by learning that our dates were cooking, and we used to compete against each other. I'd post on social media, and people wanted to try our food. So we started doing underground dining clubs to try to make money and sharpen our skills.
Then, we pivoted to a supper club out of my apartment with 12 seats and six courses. The idea was to bring people together, create opportunities over the love of food, and share culture, which evolved into what The Monkey King is today.
The Monkey King is our third iteration—a culmination of all of our concepts. Each concept gave us more of the experience we needed to open up the Monkey King.
One day, we were just looking at spaces to gain the experience of looking at spaces, knowing what to look for and what questions to ask because we knew we would have to do this when we opened our own restaurant. But when we walked through our space at 1329 Willoughby in Bushwick, we could see our come to life—we felt that this would be where we would make all our dreams come true.
And then the pandemic happened.
Munzzy: At that point, we decided to go all in—failure was not an option. At the time, we weren't able to see it as a blessing, but reflecting back now, we realize how much of a silver lining it was.
We were supposed to open in June 2020 but opened on October 28, 2022—almost two years later. We paid rent for nearly two and a half years with no business, and we even couldn't qualify for PPP or a loan.
In March 2021, we ran out of funding to finish construction on our dining room. We couldn't open it, so we opened our kitchen for takeout and delivery. And that was even after all the community support we got after we ran a GoFundMe.
We didn't even get to run the menu we wanted with the delivery menu. But we had to adapt and operate as a ghost kitchen while we figured out a menu that carried out well.
Harvey: We actually signed the lease in December 2019. And strangely enough, it was actually in the midst of the pandemic, during lockdown, that we had the opportunity to take a cop-out. We could step away from this project—from this space altogether—with no penalties.
That was probably one of the darkest moments of our lives—for me specifically—because much of that decision fell on me.
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What made you believe you could do this when you really wanted to give up?
Harvey: A lot of it was the fear of failing—we were so scared to fail. We couldn't fail. And it kept us going—we didn't have a choice.
I had been working nonstop for two years before I met Munzzy. By the time we started on The Monkey King, I was already four years in with no break—working every day with no payoff. I made some money here and there, but it wasn't anything consistent.
My family thought I was crazy. My relatives thought I was crazy. They were like, "When will you find a job?"
When we signed a lease for the restaurant, and we got hit with the pandemic, I was freaking out because we had to make the decision of either breaking ground for construction or pulling out. If we decided to move forward, we would be about $250,000 in the hole the next day or we could walk away and cut our losses at about $40,000. So it was huge—it was one of the most significant decisions of my personal life that kept me up for almost a whole month.
We were literally like, do we cut the arm off to save the rest of the body?
Fortunately, I met a friend, and we started talking about entrepreneurship. I began to soundboard my concerns, fears, and insecurities to him. And he stopped me while I was trying to make this decision and asked me, "When was the last time you took a vacation? You just sound like you're really burnt out. I can't give you advice because it sounds like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place."
So we did this exercise where he asked me to imagine who one of my favorite role models in the industry was, and I picked David Chang.
That Monday, I went to a bed and breakfast on a solo trip to decompress and met and talked to the property manager when I got there. I told her I needed to take a break and was opening a restaurant and she had immediately stopped me and said, "Hey, like I have this thing for you. I just got this book, but I think you could benefit from reading it."
She handed me David Chang's autobiography, Eat A Peach1.
So, I spent the weekend reading through his story and struggles. And I took all that in, came back, and told Munzzy this was a sign to move forward and not look back until we're at the top.
And so we decided to break ground.
What was the initial feedback to The Monkey King when you were finally able to launch?
Harvey: Going into this industry, we already had a lot of self-doubt because we're not classically trained. And all the uncertainties and doubts from family members, friends, and potential investors almost stopped us from moving forward on this project.
We really struggled to find investors. We were going into one of the most impacted industries, and we didn't have conventional experience. It was tough to convince people to co-sign us when we didn't have a track record.
Early on, we were still determining the concept. I knew I wanted to do Chinese American cuisine, and Munzzy wanted to do Bengali American cuisine—paying homage to our mother cultures and cuisines—but we didn't yet know what those dishes were or what the drink menu looked like.
But we made a conscious decision not to victimize ourselves. We had a choice: we could either cower and accept that we didn't know how to do this, or we could work, learn, gain as much experience as we could, and try to think outside the box.
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How did you find the knowledge and experience you needed to move forward? Did you have mentors or people who helped guide you along the way?
Harvey: Because I had to oversee and teach myself construction while building out the space, I didn't have the time to trail like I had initially wanted to.
Early on, I applied to be a glass polisher at all my favorite restaurants. I made a list of all my favorite restaurants in New York City, went on Indeed and Monster, and sent my resume out.
I even wrote a cover letter saying, "Hey, I would love to do this, even if it's for free—I don't care, I just want to learn." I figured the polisher position was best because it allowed me to focus on a more linear task while observing both the front and back of house. Unfortunately, that didn't really pan out for me because nobody reached out to hire me.
We had a big gap in our beverage program, and it wasn't something Munzzy or I knew or had experience with, so I took ownership of it. I made a list, went to all the top bars in New York City, and started drinking through their menu. I brought my notebook. I ordered a bunch of books from Amazon. I drank at the bar, talked with bartenders, saw how they moved, and took notes.
I would then go home and try to reverse-engineer the drinks I liked. Through that process, I built a foundation of the methods and techniques and became more comfortable creating original drinks.
Was there any point early in the process that validated your idea after so many instances of doubt?
Munzzy: Harvey and I joke that the same few who didn't believe in us or take us seriously are all starting to come around now. The people we were trying so hard to convince have come around to support us and are now selling our story for us.
And just being in the same circles of people that we looked up to or individuals that we admire, and having the privilege to call some of these people our friends and colleagues—it's a true testament that we're really doing something and people are watching us.
That was big for us because recognition was something we didn't have. Even now, we're operating out of word of mouth. We haven't spent any money on marketing or PR. So, we haven't had any publications reach out to us or showcase us. Everything has been coming out of the community. So, for people to know about The Monkey King and our work just through word of mouth and seeing the circles we're tapping into, it lets us know we're onto something. And that we have to go harder.
More than anything, Monkey King symbolizes the hope that dreams come true.
We started off in the same boat of not knowing, but somehow, we figured it out, right? If there's a will, there's always a way. We want to communicate that to our communities by doing it—through action.
Don't let things stop you from chasing your dreams. Even if you don't have the experience, funding, or resources, you will figure it out—you will always figure it out.
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