Found Treasure: Congo Go! Cambodian

April 11, 2025—Some things you can make up. Others you cannot.

Those both come into play at 1-year-old Congo Go! in Seaside, and help rank it as one of the most compelling restaurants that I’ve encountered in several years.

If that sounds like a mouthful, fair enough. 

But, after learning a little more about the tragedy that led to Congo Go’s inspired Cambodian food—cuisine impossible to find elsewhere locally—it might feel more like an understatement.

First the food.

Here the red curry soup, a hearty helping of slow-simmered chicken, carrots and Southeast Asian herbs—lemongrass on the lead—comes integrated with a choice of noodles or rice, serves as a must-order, and delivers more than enough for a single sitting. (Sizing note: The cup, at $8, is big, the bowl, at $15, is huge.)

The Lao sausage leaps with herbal intensity, inviting tinier and tinier bites because the vegetal verve goes so big, and because it’s nice to stretch out the satisfaction. On my phone, I tapped in all-caps: FRAGRANT. Even though I’d like to test the whole menu, I’ve ordered this twice.

The shrimp fried rice layers weightiness of prawn and veg with subtlety of jasmine and green onion.

Then there’s the “Kathiew” Cambodian-style beef phó, which reaches depths that great noodle soups do, but in its own way, traversing fried garlic zing and marrow-fatty roundness.

The collective yum of the dishes would make it a Found Treasure on their own, easily.

The fact they’re part of maybe two or three Cambodian restaurants between San Francisco and Santa Barbara only adds magnetism.

The discovery is upped by the unintended trick the branding plays. 

Congo Go!’s monkey mascot and boba game had me thinking this was a tropical tapioca-ball bar with an African lean. 

That allowed me to visit its neighbors—Grocery Outlet for Found Treasure wine, and my favorite dispensary for CBD gummies next door—and not give it more than a glance.

In other words, it’s a place all too easy to overlook, at least for non-boba types. (On that front, their game is very strong, with all-natural ingredients, tons of toppings, 11 different milk teas and seven fresh fruit-driven options.)

Fortunately a super foodie source wouldn’t permit my oblivion to continue.

Melanie Wong is a citizen restaurant reporter, small business advocate and food justice warrior-priestess. 

When she sent me a email about Congo Go!, the exclamation point on the action item was redundant. 

She recommended the red curry, fresh-pressed sugar cane juice, Lao sausage, flank steak satay and mochi donuts, the latter which deserve their own bakery pop-up series. 

Wong was spot on with each recommendation. 

Across several visits I dipped into all of them, plus krab puffs and a jasmine tea, and was so spoiled by it all that I felt compelled to take world travelers there to share the reveal.

The baked goods by themselves have become somewhat of a phenomenon, with the “viral” Dubai chocolate bar selling out, fast, even after the price was raised to meet demand and customers were limited to two max.

As Wong noted in her email, the cross-continental those-that-know are becoming more common clientele.

“[Chef] Thea told me that she’s getting more Southeast Asian folks who’ve heard about her cooking,” Wong wrote. “I begged her to be patient and not dumb down anything, telling her that there are already enough watered-down Thai, Viet and Chinese restaurants for the mass market.”

While that rings true—and the bright Congo Go flavor palate persists in my appetite’s imagination—the thing that lingers longer is the backstory.

The part that can be made up is there in the title. 

Cambodian-American sisters Thea and Bea Kun conceived Congo, as their in-house storytelling explains, by falling in love with a chimpanzee TV star by the same name.

“Congo” gathered fame by producing hundreds of drawings documented by early TV reports that, per Congo Go!’s literature, were completely under his creative control.

“If he considered a drawing of his finished, he would refuse to continue painting no matter how hard someone tried to convince him,” Congo Go! signage reads.

The personal element—the stuff you can’t make up—harkens to their parents’ experience as refugees escaping genocidal dictator Pol Pot. 

The Kuns’ parents made sure their daughters didn’t neglect the life, and death, that came before them.

“It’s an open wound,” Thea says. “They faced execution, saw their family killed, our grandfather killed, babies thrown [out]. The message is, ‘You better not take this life in America for granted.’ Our parents never let us forget where we came from.”

At the same time, the sisters found a way of forging identity and creativity unbound by that past.

They trained in culinary and oenology arts, respectively, acquiring experience in top kitchens like Bernardus and sommelier certification, respectively.

Now they combo on Congo, Bea tending to front of the house while Thea orchestrates the kitchen.

“We have a twin-like telepathy thing,” Bea says. “She doesn’t have to tell me what we need, I’m just on it, and it goes vice versa.”

When Thea hears that, her reply comes quick.

“We grew up with each other all our lives,” she says. “It might be a dynamic duo sort of thing. However you want to say it, we’ve always worked well together.” 

The pair bided their time working in food in their native city of Stockton, then later Terry’s Lounge and The Pocket in Carmel—the latter which Thea calls “our last test”—all while saving money to strike out on their own.

“Me and Bea, we’ve done French dining, fine dining, and we thought, ‘Let’s do something that resonates with us,'” Thea says. “When we started we were thinking, ‘Man, we’re risking it all to tell a story, please Lord let this work.’ We’re believing in ourselves, sticking to our roots.”

“We’re always on the same page,” her sister adds, “with the same goals: Send out good food and make sure guests enjoy good food, and make it memorable.”

Which is easier said than done.

But it’s happening at Congo Go!, giving the area a cuisine—and a combination of offerings—that it simply hasn’t seen.

And can’t be made up.

More at congogobobacafe.com.