WATCH: Brooklyn Restaurant Staff Fights Off Thief With Kitchen Utensils

BROOKLYN, NY — After three successful restaurant robberies along Flatlands Avenue in the East New York area of Brooklyn over three weeks in December and January, the emboldened thief in the video below met his match at Chen's Garden, a popular local Chinese-food restaurant, on the night of Jan. 4.

"He jumped up onto the counter," said the restaurant's owner, a 40-year-old woman who wished only to go by her first name, Yan. "I just grabbed my knife because I didn't want him to come over."

"I grabbed the one we use to chop the chicken in half," Yan remembered. "That's the one that was nearby."

Yan's chef then emerged from the kitchen to assist — armed with a large, perforated spoon he had been using to cook a batch of thin rice noodles called "mei fun."

Surveillance footage released Wednesday by the NYPD shows the entire ordeal.

The robber, armed with a knife and wearing an orange hoodie and a black face mask, can be seen trying to hop over the restaurant's counter into the cashier's area — presumably to steal money from the cash register, as he'd done successfully at three nearby chain restaurants. (A Dunkin Donuts, a combination KFC/Taco Bell and a Baskin Robbins, all located along Flatlands Avenue, according to the NYPD.)

But he doesn't get far. Yan and her chef quickly lunge in his direction, kitchen utensils outstretched — forcing him to roll back off the counter and make a break for the front door.

"The individual fled the location empty-handed when he was confronted by the restaurant's employees," the NYPD said in a statement.

"I don't think he's going to come back again," Yan said.

Asked if she was at all shaken by the encounter, Yan laughed a little, then said: "No. I don't really get scared."

The only thing going through her mind in the moment, she said, was that she "didn't want him to get anything, or he would grab the money — and he would come back again."

Unlike the chain-restaurant employees, all in their 20s, who were likewise confronted by the serial thief, Yan said, "I own the store. And I don't want him to get in my store. That's all."

"When you own the store, you don't want that to happen again," she said.

Recognize the dude on the losing end of the Jan. 4 face-off at Chen's Garden? (An additional police image of the suspect, apparently outfitted head to toe in Yeezy Season 2, is included below.) Tip off the NYPD at 1-800-577-TIPS.