Gastronomy Blog

In January, I wrote a post about Olive Garden. This was inspired by an article by Raymond Sokolov in the WSJ comparing Olive Garden to famed Chicago Italian restaurant Spiaggia. At the end of my post, I listed as a coming attraction my thoughts on another national chain, P. F. Chang’s China Bistro, where we had eaten just two weeks earlier to celebrate Jessica’s birthday. But I have yet to write the promised post.

I was reminded of this today in reading a guest post by Richard Florida at Andrew Sullivan’s blog in which Florida points to an article about Chang’s in Slate. The article , written by Daniel Gross, focuses on P.F. Chang’s’ surprising economic success in the midst of the recession: “Operating margins—the holy grail of any business—at P.F. Chang’s 190 stores rose from 12.8 percent to 14 percent, largely because of ‘incremental operational improvement opportunities.’ The stock has doubled since November.”

Gross’s comments on the food at P.F. Chang’s capture my own thoughts well. Gail and I ate there for the first time a year ago, when we went to Portland for a quick overnight trip on the Friday and Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend. We stopped in the Pearl District on our way out of town to go to Powell’s Books, and it was well past lunchtime as we were leaving, so we decided to eat before getting on I-5. And right by the elevator to the parking garage was a P.F. Chang’s, so we ate there. I had never been too keen to try it, but there was no point searching for something else when it was right there and we were hungry. And to our joint surprise, we really liked it. Last September, we went to the P.F. Chang’s in Bellevue Square, the first one I had ever seen. It was again right by the garage where our car was parked, across the street from the movie theater where we had just seen, um, a movie. (Okay, it was Mamma Mia! Why not?) And again we liked it. The birthday celebration in January was at the P.F. Chang’s in downtown Seattle, part of Westlake Mall. Three visits. Three good meals.

So what’s the deal? It’s not the greatest food. Not the greatest restaurant. But unlike so many neighborhood restaurants, it serves food that is not oily and heavy. Is it authentic? Maybe not, but neither is the greasy food at most non-chain local Chinese restaurants. And the truth is, it’s better than a lot of those places. That’s Gross’s conclusion too:

What accounts for the sizzle in P.F. Chang’s wok? Probably not the food. Just as saxophonist Kenny G provides jazz for people who don’t really like authentic jazz, P.F. Chang’s peddles Chinese food to diners who might not cotton to authentic Sichuan fare. Waiters don’t wheel around carts laden with steamed chicken feet as they do at dim sum parlors in New York and San Francisco. In the comfy confines of Boston’s Prudential Center, I was presented with a raft of desserts as American as, well, apple pie, including the Great Wall of Chocolate. “It’s like The Cheesecake Factory, only ethnic,” says Jennifer 8. Lee, author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. “It’s very consciously designed to cultivate an appeal to mainstream America.”

Like other successful national chains, P.F. Chang’s does find ways to annoy me. At the top of the list is the silly (and pretentious) ceremony of mixing your personalized sauce. After you order, they bring a tray to the table with mustard and soy sauce and hot oil in little containers. You are then asked how hot you like your food: mild, medium or hot. Based on your answer, they pour onto the tray the contents of the containers, with the appropriate amount of hot oil. We would happily do that ourselves. And we might even do it differently from each other. I don’t really get the point.

Speaking of the Prudential Center, that’s where we went to eat dinner on the day last August that we flew into Boston, the Friday of Labor Day weekend, to help Joel move apartments before going down to Nantucket. We and Joel were on opposite sides of the Pru, and our friends Gerry and Margie were driving in from Newton to meet us there. We had to choose between the Pru’s two main upscale chain restaurants: P.F. Chang’s and The Cheesecake Factory. The Cheesecake Factory won. Our opinion of that restaurant is a story for another time.