Washington Post
The wait is over: Peter Chang returns to Northern Virginia on Saturday
With every place he's opened in Fredericksburg, Glen Allen and other Virginia towns, Peter Chang has been teasing those devoted Changians who transformed the former Chinese Embassy chef into a certified cult figure via their obsessive stalking/dining at Chang's pit stops in Fairfax and Alexandria in the mid-2000s.
For years, in fact, their obsessiveness has been the narrative backbone of the Peter Chang Story, the pursuit practically as important as the cuisine itself.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
James Beard Nomination
For the first time in the 25-year history of the James Beard Foundation Awards, three Richmond-area chefs have been named semifinalists for best chef Mid-Atlantic.
Lee Gregory, chef and co-owner of The Roosevelt; Dale Reitzer, chef and co-owner of Acacia mid-town; and Peter Chang, chef and co-owner of Peter Chang China Cafe, were named James Beard Foundation Restaurant and Chef Award Semifinalists for best chef Mid-Atlantic Wednesday. Click here to see more.
Big Bun
Baked fresh; a favorite among diners.
Boneless Whole Fish
Tilapia with a special, homemade sweet & sour sauce.
Soup Steam Pork Buns
Handmade and steamed; served with vinegar dipping sauce.
Dry Fried Eggplant
Lightly battered egg plant sticks, deep fried and stir-fried with Szechuan
peppercorn and chili, scallions and cilantro.
Crispy Pork Belly
Slightly battered pork belly, deep-fried and stir-fried with scallion, cilantro, dried chili pepper
and Szechuan peppercorn.
Cilantro Lime Fish
Minced fish with cilantro, gently wrapped with a flaky spring roll skin.
Lamb Chop
Pre-marinated and pan-seared. Finally, stir-fried with chili powder and cumin
seed.
Duck In Stone Pot
Savory slices of duck stewed with mixed vegetables, tofu skin, and leeks in Ma La (“hot & numbing”) sauce.
Beef in Sichuan Chili
Sliced, pre-marinated beef sautéed with diced onions and Szechuan
chili in a sauce mixed of paste and chili oil. Finished with cilantro and sesame.
Washington Post
Master Chef Peter Chang Returns to D.C. Area with Rockville Restaurant
For years, dedicated Changians had hoped their leader, master chef Peter Chang, would return to the Northern Virginia region where his spicy-and-numbing Sichuan cooking had transformed him into a cult figure. On Tuesday, Chang's followers received some welcome news: The former Chinese embassy chef would return to the D.C. area, but in Rockville, where he is expected to open the eponymous Peter Chang early next year. Federal Realty Investment Trust, owners of Rockville Town Square, announced that Chang would open his first Maryland restaurant in a 3,100-square-foot space in the mixed-use development, already home to chains such as Five Guys, BonChon Chicken and Noodles & Company. The developer offered few details, not even an address for the forthcoming restaurant.
New York Times
Where Peter Chang Cooks, They Will Follow
Peter Chang was in the house.
“Did you see Chang up front?” one of my guests asked, taking a seat around a big glass lazy susan in the back of Peter Chang China Café in this suburb of Richmond. “By the register?”
There he was, just hanging out in civilian clothes, the chef whose devotees will travel hundreds of miles on a rumor that he may be cooking in some far-off town. Mr. Chang’s unpredictable appearances in the kitchen are at least as famous as his Sichuan-style dry-fried eggplant. He used to have a habit of quitting any restaurant where his food had attracted a fanatical following or, worse, a good review.
This, of course, made his followers all the more fanatical. He hopscotched around Chinese restaurants in Virginia, turned up at several in Georgia and was briefly sighted in Virginia again before surfacing in Tennessee for a minute or two. He must be the only chef in America whose Wikipedia entry contains a section called “Disappearances and movement.”
Andrew Zimmerman
Incendiary Chinese Cuisine
Many consider Peter Chang to be the greatest Chinese chef cooking in America, and he has a devoted legion of followers to prove it. Chang’s food-obsessed groupies, who’ve spent years chasing the peripatetic chef across the country, are finally at peace now that he’s settled down in Virginia. At Peter Chang’s China Cafe you’ll find phenomenal Szechuan food that is a result of a combination of masterful techniques and flawless ingredients. One of his signature dishes is dry fried eggplant, a technique he developed to eliminate any oily mouthfeel. This technique yields a soft, creamy interior and dry, crunchy crust that’s coated in numbing bliss and fiercely pleasurable hot chiles. He’s also famous, and rightfully so, for dishes such as beggar’s duck (a perfectly roasted duck that’s perfumed with sweet spices and stuffed with seven jewel rice), ma la rabbit hot pot, crispy pork belly, and lobster and broken rice porridge. This cult figure now has four Virginia locations, so there’s no better time to check out his impeccable Chinese cuisine. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed. Click here to see more
Northern Virginia Magazine
Peter Chang: Stay. You: Go.
Go quickly to Peter Chang China Cafe. The chef—famed as much for his gorgeous food as for fleeing restaurants across the South—opened his eponymous Chinese restaurant in a strip mall north of downtown Fredericksburg in May.
The flavors have stayed put in the few months I have eaten at Chang’s restaurants, first at China Grill outside of Richmond in Glen Allen and then in Fredericksburg. I am late to the Chang game. I am a convert.
On the way to Fredericksburg—the three hours it took to slog down 95 from Alexandria one Saturday—I conned my friend into driving. I told her I’d entertain. Road trips usually require snacks, but when you’re driving to eat, other sustenance is necessary. I read her stories of Chang. Both The New Yorker and Oxford American ran articles devoted to the fandom of Chang in the March 2010 issues. I printed both out, including another from Garden & Gun’s first issue of 2013.
“I feel like we’re going to eat Jesus’ food,” my friend said after I read aloud the devotion, the hysteria, the obsession that is the cult of Chef Peter Chang.
Chang first started cooking in this country at the Chinese Embassy. And from there, he’s remained in the United States. He’s cooked in Fairfax (China Star), Alexandria (TemptAsia Cafe), again in Fairfax (Szechuan Boy), then Marietta, Ga. (Tasty China), Knoxville, Tenn.(Hong Kong House) and back to Virginia—first in Charlottesville (Peter Chang China Grill), Richmond (Peter Chang China Grill), Williamsburg (Peter Chang China Cafe) and now Fredericksburg (Peter Chang China Cafe), with all four Virginia locations currently open, serving mostly the same menu. General Lee, owner of the Chang restaurants, and “Peter’s babysitter,” will open a location in Virginia Beach by late November and is looking for space in Alexandria and Fairfax.
Huffington Post
Peter Chang Opens Fredericksburg China Café, Looks Toward Washington, D.C.
The famously wanderlust-prone chef Peter Chang has, in recent years, become easier to find. At least for Virginians.
Chang is a former Chinese Embassy chef with a distinctive cooking style — hot and numbing is how it's often described; Todd Kliman once called him "The Perfect Chef."
So distinctive, and so beloved, is this perfectly hard to pin down chef's food that determined followers have, through the years, expended great effort to monitor Chang's frequent, and frustrating, movements around the country — read Calvin Trillin's excellent 2010 New Yorker article on these eaters' detective work, tracking Chang from from one strip-mall to the next in Virginia, California, Georgia, and beyond. Click here to see more
Garden & Gun
Bringing the Heat: Chef Peter Chang
The South's roving master of real Chinese has finally found a home.
When I ask Peter Chang, the wiry forty-nine-year-old – now famous – Chinese chef, about peppers, and his business partner, Gen Lee, a retired Chinese chef with an auspicious Southern name, translates, a smile comes to Chang's calm face and crow's feet form around his eyes. This is a question he likes.
We're sitting in his new restaurant, Peter Chang China Cafe, in Richmond, Virginia, and I have just devoured the staff lunch – asparagus and the chicken parts that won't be served later in a delicious brown sauce – as well as some of my favorite Chang dishes: flaky fried bamboo fish and dry-fried eggplant. Both are rubbed in cumin, specked with fiery hot red peppers, and served with cooling cilantro. Click here to see more.
Style Weekly
Hot, Numb and Happening
To truly experience a Chinese dinner, gather up some friends and dine family-style, because one dish cannot sum up the thrilling ride and dazzling fu he wei, the complex flavors, of Sichuan cuisine.
Peter Chang China Café's 80-item menu makes that ride possible. I suggest ordering at least one mild, one sweet (or sweet and sour), one hu la scorched chili, and one ma la dish. The simultaneously hot (la) and numbing (ma) characteristic is the hallmark of Sichuan cooking. It's the result of marrying chilies with Sichuan peppers, the fruit of the prickly-ash bush that creates a tingling, buzzing sensation on your lips and tongue, whose antidotes are something creamy or sweet, not water.
Located in the same Short Pump strip mall as a Wal-Mart, Peter Chang's is bright and pleasant with pastel walls, photos of Chinese landscapes and silk flowers on ledges, along with colorful silk butterflies suspended from the ceiling. Reservations are advisable; on a recent Tuesday night the dining room was packed and a dozen diners were waiting outside. A note on the window indicates the restaurant is suspending takeout orders for now.
Washington Post
Chef Peter Chang Settles Down with Richmond-Area Restaurant
Peter Chang, the peripatetic chef who once served presidents at the Chinese Embassy and whose disciples follow him like gastronomic Deadheads high on Sichuan peppercorns, may have finally found a home within sniffing distance of the Beltway.
On Monday, the chef and his business partner, Gen Lee, opened Peter Chang Cafe in Glen Allen, Va., where the two men have grand plans not only to keep Chang rooted but to spread his knowledge of genuine, flame-throwing Sichuan cooking. They're talking about using their new Virginia home as a hub for a chain of franchised restaurants with cooks trained by the master himself.
If the partners' plan unfolds as they hope – a significant question given Chang's recent track record and the country's long history with tame, Americanized Chinese food – it could mark an end to a quixotic period in Chang's career. Click here to see more.
The New Yorker
Where's Chang?
When I think about who might be the most devoted and influential Changian I’ve met—the closest equivalent to what the food Web site chowhound.com used to call its Alpha Dog—the person who usually comes to mind is John Binkley, a retired Washington economist who now lives in Franklin, North Carolina.