This review appears in The Washington Post’s 2019 Fall Dining Guide as No. 7 on a list of the year’s top 10 restaurants.
The list of dishes that propelled Mama Chang to the No. 1 spot in my spring dining guide, including sweet potato noodles tossed with pork and mustard greens, grew longer with the recent addition of some fresh ideas: springy morsels of chicken blasted with black pepper sauce, warm-spiced pork belly paired with tea-stained eggs, and custardy scrambled eggs dressed up with tomato and pearly shrimp. Even spinach stir-fried with garlic impresses me with its sheen and faint crunch.
Cooking isn’t the only thing driving me to this tidy, 200-seat retreat in Fairfax. The service is attentive, the wine list shows thought, and as big as the dining room is, acres of light wood and open-sided booths make for a comfortable roost while you feast.
3 stars (Excellent)
Mama Chang: 3251 Old Lee Hwy., Fairfax. 703-268-5556. mamachangva.com .
Open: Dinner daily, lunch daily, dim sum weekends.
Prices: Small plates $10-$14, family-style plates $17-$40.
Sound check: 74 decibels / Must speak with raised voice.
The Top 10 restaurants of 2019:
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The following review originally appeared in The Washington Post’s 2019 Spring Dining Guide as No. 1 on a list of the year’s 10 best new restaurants.
Mama Chang knows best
(Excellent)
The latest from serial restaurateur Peter Chang seats more customers (200) than any other dining room in his realm. Good thing, given that Mama Chang welcomed 1,000 diners a day the weekend it opened in Fairfax — and shows no signs of slowing down. As the name implies, the spring arrival is a celebration of the women in Chang’s family: his mother, Ronger Wang, a former longtime farmer in central China, and Lisa, his wife and one-time superior. (In an earlier life, she outranked him in the kitchen of the Chinese luxury liner on which they both cooked.) Mama Chang is more or less an edible scrapbook for Lydia Chang, the couple’s daughter and chief of business development, who grew up eating delicate fish balls (look for them under “grandma’s original” on the menu) and her mother’s sweet potato noodles tossed with squiggles of pork and pickled mustard greens. With the exception of Lisa Chang’s popular scallion bubble cake, the dishes at Mama Chang — chicken chow mein, shrimp with snow peas (and teasing heat) — will be new to the brand’s fans. Dry-fried cauliflower, for instance, is a spicy take on the popular dry-fried eggplant offered at the family’s other outposts — and even better, if you ask me. The takeaway: Women rock.
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The following review was originally published April 4, 2019.
Peter Chang returns to Fairfax, with a new star powered by women
Fact: When Peter Chang and his future wife, Lisa, were cooking together on a Chinese luxury liner in the 1980s, it was Lisa who held the senior kitchen position, not Peter, who would go on to become famous in the United States for his collection of restaurants, most bearing his name.
The anecdote is shared by their daughter to explain the couple’s latest establishment: Mama Chang in Fairfax, “a celebration of women in the family,” says Lydia Chang, chief of business development.
How eager were some of us to taste the newcomer? Lydia says Mama Chang received about 1,000 guests a day on its opening weekend in March. Good thing the space can accommodate almost 200 customers, some of whom, she says, had been following her father’s work since he opened his first restaurant, China Star in Fairfax, 16 years ago.
Mama Chang incorporates the homestyle dishes she said she grew up eating, based on recipes from her mother and grandmother, Ronger Wang, a former longtime farmer in Hubei in central China. Hoisting glassy sweet potato noodles, squiggles of pork and pickled mustard greens in my chopsticks leads me to believe Lydia had a happy childhood. I know the dish makes this adult glad to be in the new restaurant (which is across the street from Artie’s, a benefactor of Mama Chang’s if there’s any wait).
The menu brims with explanations for the crowds. Stubby duck rolls that are essentially Peking duck, presented in crisp spring rolls rather than with traditional pancakes. Fish balls with the texture of mousse and the delicate sweetness of flounder, served in a bowl brightened with goji berries on a raised stand — “grandma’s original,” according to the script. Slices of deep-fried lotus root garnished with chopped onion (and noise enough to attract the attention of my sound meter) are like the best potato chips: hard to stop at one.
Lydia says Mama Chang’s pulsing version of chow mein is meant to “repair the reputation” of the dish she enjoyed as a child — for breakfast — but which some of us first experienced as a meal from a can. Slippery wheat noodles combined with soft bits of chicken, chewy fermented black beans, scallions and chiles is wholly delicious. The Chinese version of beef jerky turns out to be soft smoky ropes of meat whose Sichuan peppercorns numb the tongue in the best way possible.
If there’s a better, more accessible Chinese experience in Northern Virginia right now, I have yet to make its acquaintance. Every plate I’ve tried tastes as if it were prepared just for its recipient, and the bonus is a wide-ranging, fairly priced wine list. Actually, another lure is the service. The waiters I have encountered know the menu as well as if they, too, had been raised on the cooking. When we order the roast duck, a server’s eyes light up. “The chef is from Guangzhou,” the sprawling port city northwest of Hong Kong, he says of a cook with a way with fowl. “His specialty is the duck.” The eventual entree finds velvety meat under mahogany skin and a light wash of sauce.
The only dish to carry over from another of the Changs’ restaurants is the popular scallion bubble cake, a golden blimp inflated with steam and, you should know, a creation of Lisa’s. The dry-fried cauliflower at Mama Chang comes with the same firepower as the dry-fried eggplant served at the Changs’ other establishments, including Q by Peter Chang, where Lisa works on weekends.
The dining room is airy and easy on the eyes, outfitted with blond wood tables, white tiles, a pop of greenery and beige banquettes beneath lengths of rope. Side rooms sport round tables capable of seating as many as 13 diners. The kitchen, which employs a dozen cooks, is visible behind a half-screen.
The primary chef may come as a surprise. “The secret is: my dad,” says his daughter. But make no mistake. Mama Chang is motherly at heart.