DAVID NELSON / ON RESTAURANTS : New Chang May Be Chic, but It’s Chintzy on Choices

The new Chang in the Costa Verde Center is a handsome restaurant, and one that, judging by the length of waits at both lunch and dinner, already has discovered the golden touch of a Golden Triangle location.

Like several other members of the newer generation of Chinese restaurants (notably the nearby Panda Country and the unrelated Panda Inn downtown), Chang has abandoned the rampant dragons and crimson walls of old-style Chinese houses in favor of a bold, contemporary decor that grabs the attention and promises a fairly sophisticated restaurant experience. The mood is up, the feel upwardly mobile--but, if Chang has taken one step forward with the atmosphere, it has taken two steps backward with the menu.

It is not that the selection of dishes is unappealing, but that it is limited, especially for a place of this size. The lunch menu is the more severely restricted, and the unspoken message transmitted by the management seems to be that they know that most people will order sweet-and-sour or kung pao , so why offer variety? This truncation of selection also helps to feed ‘em and get ‘em out during the lunch rush--and, if people wished only to feed, this attitude would be unobjectionable.

About 20 years ago, there began a long, upward climb to a vastly greater variety of Chinese dishes and styles--formal Mandarin cuisine, the now-ubiquitous Szechuan, Hunan and even Fukien cooking. But a decline of sorts, a constriction of options, now seems in progress, at least at a number of restaurants around San Diego. Chang is by no means the first to reduce its menu to a sort of Top 40 of Chinese hits.

A luncheon here was not a happy experience. The wait for the table was not too long, but the server arrived long after the guests had been seated, maintained a tardy routine through the meal and was consistently out of sight at crucial moments.

The best choices on the all-too-short menu looked like the imperial chicken and the chef’s shrimp--one spicy-hot dish, and one mild--preceded by a starter of fried dumplings, which are as commonplace as they are generally irresistible. However, these dumplings verged on being burned, and the taste of the over-crisped dough eclipsed any other flavors.

The imperial chicken (also listed on the dinner menu in shrimp and lobster versions) was marked with a star signifying heat, and was described as sliced white meat with minced mushrooms, water chestnuts and ginger in a spicy tomato paste sauce. The sum in this case was rather less than the parts, and one guest actually said the preparation--barely spicy and virtually innocent of ginger--had a canned flavor. The chef’s shrimp, a simple stir-fry of shrimp, broccoli and snow peas in a light white sauce, was dull rather than delicate. The menu noted garlic, an item in short supply in this particular serving.

Dinner visits came off better, if the cooking remained uneven, and an added attraction was a pianist with a laudable weakness for Gershwin.

The larger--but not extensive--evening menu does offer a few special dishes, among them a tasty appetizer called “seasoned chicken” that seems like the Chinese answer to spicy Buffalo-style chicken wings, minus the blue cheese dressing. These crisp, tasty nibbles consisted of strips of boned breast fiercely seasoned with salt and black and red peppers. The minced chicken, a savory preparation rolled in crisp lettuce leaves at table, is widely available (servers at some restaurants delight in calling these rolls “Chinese burritos”) and is well-done here. Won ton, which one willingly grants are a staid selection, seemed straight from the box, and were tough to boot.

initial,2 I t seems reasonable to suppose that the choicest dishes are grouped under the “Chang’s Choice” menu heading, which does include several excellent offerings. Many are pairings that contrast in seasoning or texture, and the best of these may be the “twin delights,” or twin mounds of shredded chicken and pork prepared in an identical manner. The dish cleverly and deliciously contrasts the two meats. A second and reasonably happy pairing is offered by the “rainbow” shrimp, which matches a lightly sauced Cantonese preparation with a spicier type that seemed like imperial shrimp with the ginger. Orange beef, also listed under “Chang’s Choice” and a great favorite around town, consisted of too large and thick slices of meat fried inside a soggy coating and smeared with an indecisive sauce in which orange played a very minor role.

From the standing list, the eggplant Szechuan, typically prepared with minced pork (like many Chinese vegetable dishes, this is not vegetarian), was sweet and zesty in its enrobing, spicy sauce. Some of the eggplant melted into the sauce, which made for a rich half-stew, half-saute. And, despite the experience with the imperial chicken, this bird on the whole seems the star of the menu, especially in the dishes that feature pine nuts (toasted and arranged over minced white meat) and honey, which, teamed with vinegar, produces a suave variation on sweet-and-sour.

Standard fare includes full complements of moo shus , yu-shiangs , kung paos and lo mein noodle dishes, and a more interesting offering of pan-fried soft noodles.

Chang

Costa Verde Center, Genesee Avenue at La Jolla Village Drive, San Diego

558-2288

Lunch and dinner daily. Entrees $5.75 to $14.95 Dinner for two, including a glass of wine each, tax and tip, about $20 to $40

Credit cards accepted