PF Chang's Bistro

Ever judge a restaurant by their patrons?
Err...Let me rephrase that.
Ever judge how good a Chinese Restaurant is by the number/ratio of Chinese people eating there?

(smile) I know you have.... and right you should!
From my experience... In the 160 seat capacity restaurant, I counted a total of only 4 Asians dining Saturday night. So for what ever that's worth... you can draw your own conclusions.

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Last night, Aramis, his fiance, me(Porthos) and my wife decided to take a 20 minute car ride to PF Chang's in Edgewater, NJ.
Aramis and I have noticed this busy family restaurant for some time. We've spoken of it numerous times but neither one of us had pulled the trigger to investigate first hand what the deal was with this place.
Every time one of us would drive past it, we'd notice a packed parking lot.
We therefore jokingly speculated they were spiking their food with cocaine order to generate that kind of return patronage.
(The power of blow is highly addictive. That's all I wanted to say.)

So that being said, we needed to go check it out for ourselves.

Play-by-play:
- It's now 5:15pm Saturday night. Aramis and I talk on the phone and we "pull the trigger".
- I call to make a reservation.
- 6pm and 9pm were the only reservations available.
- I grabbed the 6pm thinking we might want to sneak in a movie later in the night.
(we ended up seeing Lions for Lambs : it's great, go see it!)
Reservation #6055 Party of 4 for 6pm... done.
- We get to PF Chang's at 5:53pm and I rush to the receptionist to announce our arrival.
- Receptionist says, "It's going to be a 15 to 20 minute wait.... we are very busy today sir..."
Aramis and I look at each other puzzled...thinking why we even have a reservation.
So trivial moment #1 right off the bat.

We sit there for another 25 minutes (in the meantime, all four of us decided what we wanted to eat and circled the menu in order to expedite the ordering when seated) before they let us know a table was being cleared for us.
We were then escorted to our table.
Perhaps I'm a little too critical, but here's trivial moment #2.
The table was bare when we were seated. And as we were being greeted at the table, several servers placed the rolled up silverware/linen and flat dish in front of us ...
Furthermore, underneath the table, we kept on stepping on something and we realized it was old forks, linens and other trash. Stunning isn't it?






Then came the Chang Sauce. Yah, what the heck is this thing?
It looks like a simple condiment dish with soy sauce, vinegar and hot oil, followed by mustard, flavored soy sauce and sambal oelek.
But they cleverly market it as "Chang Sauce" and people love it.

So the night continues with these dishes...

- Hot and Sour Soup : Tasted like something I had 20 years ago in Chinatown. The flavor was nostalgic but not pleasant.
- Garlic sauteed Sugar Snap Peas : They use jarred garlic.. I hate jarred garlic.
- Kung Pao Scallops : Best dish of the night. I enjoyed this but I'm sure I could recreate this at home. Kung Pao is a real dish in China but it's never been done justice in the States. Not surprising.
- DanDan Noodles : Terrible. They first need to look up what DanDan is.
- Chang's Chicken : Terrible (which they claim to be adapted from General Chu's Chicken) trivial moment #3... who is General Chu?
- Veggie Dumplings : More like veggie pureed fried ravioli. Not very good.