Dinner @ P.F. Chang's, Richland, Washington (April 1, 2008)

I know, April 1st was two weeks ago, but hey.

My mom wanted to treat my sister to a birthday dinner, and I was invited so I said sure. P.F. Chang's China Bistro opened here a few months ago, in a location behind a shopping mall (the area's only big shopping mall), and a number of my mom's friends were saying "oh, that place is great" and just giving it "good raves". I on the other hand was skeptical. I like my Chinese food to feel like home, not something from a chain. Eating at Panda Express once was enough, so I was skeptical even though P.F. Chang's promoted themselves as being a bit more "classy" than a normal Chinese restaurant. Now looks can be deceiving, it might be a cover up for sub-par food, my skeptical mind said, but as I entered it looked very nice, almost the kind of place I normally wouldn't go to. Very Chic and modern, and it was weird to be eating at a Chinese restaurant and hear Smashing Pumpkins and Red Hot Chili Peppers as "atmosphere".

All of us ordered our dishes and we assumed that it was going to be our own individual plates. But it looked and felt like an a la carte-type thing, and we ate that way. What was interesting was that our waiter actually stirred the mustard with the soy sauce, we all looked at each other as if to say "whoa!"

We all started out with chicken lettuce wraps, a first for all of us, and it was really good. It was like a homemade chicken burrito without the tortilla, and it was very tasty due to the sauce they used.

I ordered the Crispy Honey Chicken and liked it, but liked what my mom had ordered, which was the Spicy Ground Chicken & Eggplant. Oh, this one was ono, the eggplant was cooked just right and the sauce, I could just eat that and rice all day. My nephew had Orange Peel Chicken, but he didn't like the actual orange peel but ate everything else. He also liked the honey chicken I had. There were a lot of families in there, and we arrived early enough to avoid the dinner crowd, which was picking up just as we left.

I would like to go to this place again and try some of their other dishes. What I'm also looking forward to is the restaurant next door that will be opening very soon: Famous Dave's BBQ.