Peter Chang — Restaurant in Columbia

Visited on 8/31/23 while the concert series was in progress. Nice appearance & atmosphere there. Clean restroom. Ordered a drink at the bar that abuts the open space for a beverage. Asked if they had a Vanilla Vodka & was pleased it was available. Ordered a double shot neat. For the uninitiated, that's simply a double serving of the ordered serving straight from the bottle without ice or mixer. The gentleman bartender delivered such which was much more a single than a double. Well, $23.98 later for that one drink, I mentioned that having traveled throughout the lower 48 states , Alberta , British Columbia, New Brunswick & Nova Scotia all since 2018, that is 80,000 road miles....I've never experienced so little for so much. His response was that it was Absolute (Vodka). I replied all smiles that it was absolute alright. Absolutely rediculous & requested that either the glass receive a small respite or the check. Either way I am good. I did realize about buyer beware & in all fairness did not ask about the cost for this one drink. BTW, there are 39 of what should be 1.5 oz measured single shots in a 1.75 litre bottle available locally to me for around $35.00 but here comes the rest of the story. He didn't bother measuring & just poured. Pretty common occurance ; however, this was certainly a time I would have preferred a measured quanity which I thought that in my experience is just plain rare. Bartenders understand the reality that service sells. I guess this wasn't his day. OK. So he decides that I must live with my decision regarding buyer beware & so do I. He disappears & a very nice young lady appears behind the bar & I give her a $100.00 note without discussion. She promply disappears. The bar is left unattended. He returns & I ask for my change for the $100.00 payment. He states that I haven't paid anything & becomes adament at my request. From across the bar, I look immediately next to the register & believe I may see the clipboard with a $100.00 note front & center. I point that out to him & he claims it's not mine. Long strory short, I entered his space, retrieved the clipboard & exposed the check hidden beneath the $100.00 note. Now that should have been enough but Nooo. Next thing I know I have a host of women around me speaking a variety of languages. Luckily the nice young lady that I gave the $100.00 note to was one of them. Frankly, I don't believe she understood the english language but she made sure that management understood that I paid the check & then some. It gets better. So they cash the $100.00 but don't get the change correct. They overpaid me which I promptly refunded the difference without tip & was glad to get away from there. As for the food & a tip to you? I don't ever...

I took my wife there on a date night before a concert. We were able to walk in with no reservations and were seated right away. The place looks clean, neat and is very beautiful.

The food was rated at a 2 for the following reasons. I got the pan fried pork belly. The menu does not indicate this comes out with anything, and that should be the way you should expect most of the entrees. I had to order rice on the side. The Pan Fried pork belly had 3 peppers for spicy, but did not say anything about numbing like it did on other menu items (Crispy Pork Belly). This pork belly had so much numbing, I was surprised they had any left after my order. My wife had the Kung Pao chicken and it also had numbing on it even though it did not show it on the menu, however it was just a fraction of what was in the pork belly. Lastly, about half the pork belly had an after taste that made me think it was on the edge of spoilage. Being a man, I ate the entire thing and did not get sick at all.

The wins for the night were the brown rice which had a wonderful lemony flavor that made me eat most of it. I hate brown rice and I ate most of it. It was that good. It could have been the numbing, but I think it was really that good. My wife commented that it was a weird feeling for the numbing for her dinner but I thought her dinner was great after what I ate. The chicken was super fresh and the vegetables and sauce were great. It could have been the numbing, but I felt like JarJar Binks. Lastly, the menu needs some work. If something should have numbing or not needs to be more clear between their printed menu and the online menu. The online menu has less items on it that contain numbing and in person, so far, both dishes that should not have had it per both menus had it in the food.

I gave the service a 5 stars even though I had to ask about what comes with the pork belly. The answer: Pork Belly. If you want rice you need to order it. At least I found out before I ordered. Other than that, service was fast and we did not sit around that long waiting for anything.

The atmosphere could use some work on where people waiting for a seat are located. There must have been 10 people standing behind me as I ate my food. They have this cool looking indoor/outdoor bar right on the corner of the building. I think it looks really beautiful from both the inside and outside. However, the menu and drink menu does not list all of the items you can get, such as a glass of wine. Another ding on the menu.

I would go back and try another dish that perhaps has more popularity to avoid the off flavor I experienced. I will definitely go back to give it another shot as this could have been an "off" night...

We were very excited to eat here. We used to be frequent patrons at the Rockville location, but since moving, we haven't been going very often. We recently discovered that this location opened up and it is much more convenient to us. So of course we decided to come here as soon as we had a special occasion - in this case, a birthday.

We started off with a bubble pancake - a must-have. It was crispy and delicious. But it was greasy. So expect to get your hands dirty. The dry-fried eggplant is another classic that I recommend to everyone. Some pieces were a bit unevenly coated. The first piece I had was very mild, while several other pieces I had were very spicy or more salty. But overall, we were very satisfied with it.

We also ordered egg fried rice, dry scallion stir-fried with Waygu beef, and cumin spicy lamb shank. The egg fried rice was okay. But it was not particularly flavorful and not really worth $9. The Waygu beef dish came with onion and broccoli, but not much scallion. The beef was also on the rare side. We asked if that was typical. They said med rare is usually how it is served. They were really nice about cooking it more for us (since I couldn't have it that rare). My husband can vouch that it was super tender and flavorful the way it was originally served though. So if you can have rarer meat, that is definitely the best way to enjoy it. But even after they cooked it more, the texture was good and the sauce had a really great flavor. But we did feel that the portion size was pretty small. The lamb shank was delicious and a bit better in terms of portion size. The seasoning was nice. It was spicy. The pieces were tender and flavorful.

We asked if they did anything for birthdays, and the waiter came out with two of their glutinous rice cakes w/ brown sugar with a candle in it. They were SOOO GOOD! They were fried and had a really nice crunchy layer on the outside with a nice gooey texture on the inside. It was like a dessert version of a mozzarella stick. If you have a sweet tooth, you won't be disappointed.

This location did a really great job. Even though we didn't find some of our Peter Chang favorites on the menu, the food tasted great, the service was fantastic, and the overall experience was great. The portion sizes were okay, though a bit lacking for the waygu beef dish. The price was definitely higher than what we remembered paying in the past at the Rockville location. We aren't sure if prices are actually higher at this location or if all locations raised their prices. Nonetheless, we think it is worth coming back, even if we have to pay more for it. And we will definitely be ordering those rice...