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.