Mr. Zhang’s: The nearest good Chinese restaurant
In our never-ending quest to find good Chinese food not too far from Vero Beach (we’ve long-since abandoned hope of ever having it in Vero Beach), we have located an excellent Chinese restaurant not much more than an hour away.
Our new nominee as Best-Chinese-Restaurant-Within-a-Reasonable-Drive is Mr. Zhang’s, located just off the Donald Ross Road exit of I-95 on the northern edge of Palm Beach Gardens.
We’re talking about little more than an hour down the interstate to feast on authentic Cantonese food that not only is a major upgrade, authenticity-wise, on the fare at PF Chang’s about 10 minutes farther south, but which would measure up well in most big cities.
The first encouraging sign comes when you enter Mr. Zhang’s, and are greeted by a scowling middle-aged Chinese woman rather than one of the smiling air-heads at PF Chang’s who always tell you there will be a 30-minute wait when you know darn well you won’t be seated for over an hour.
Once at your table in this classy restaurant, your first tough decision will be whether to start with one of Mr. Zhang’s excellent soups or with one of the appetizers.
Over the course of two visits, we sampled several of the soups. Our favorite was the hot-and-sour ($2.95), one of the better ones we have had recently, though the won-ton soup and the sweet corn chicken soup -- sweet corn and chicken in a mild egg drop broth -- were both first-rate.
If you decide to begin with an appetizer, it would be hard to improve on Mr. Zhang’s dumplings ($6). We tried both the traditional dumplings (seasoned shredded pork, cabbage and shiitake mushrooms) and the vegetable dumplings (consisting of shitake mushroom, water chestnut and finely diced vegetables).
While the traditional dumplings were very tasty, the vegetable dumplings were a real treat. We would recommend fried for the traditional dumplings, and steamed for the vegetable. We preferred the dumplings to the dim sum ($7), an open faced dumpling consisting of minced shrimp, seasoned ground pork blended together with shiitake mushrooms, topped off with crab roe.
For main courses, we tried the Grand Mariner Prawn, the roast duck, the salted pepper calamari, the steak kew, and the mu shu chicken.
The Grand Mariner Prawn may be the best shrimp dish I have ever had in many years of dining in Chinese restaurants. Large and luscious saltwater prawns, blossom-cut, are simmered briefly to a golden color before being drizzled with a velveteen glaze and garnished with candied walnuts.
You simply have to try this dish.
The roast duck was a bit of a disappointment. Marinated in the chef’s ginger-toned seasoning, the duck was slow roasted until brown and crisp. While tasty, this duck was a bony rascal – and I prefer the thinner strips of crispy duck you get with a Peking Duck to the larger chunks that came with this dish.
The salted pepper calamari, sliced calamari sautéed and flavored with spicy peppers, onions and sea salt, was tasty, and the steak kew – pieces of T-bone steak served with garden vegetables and mushrooms sautéed in a sweet sauce – was an excellent rendition of this classic Cantonese dish.
But the surprise of the evening was the mu shu chicken – a longtime favorite of our companion. The marinated strips of chicken, wok-tossed with an array of napa cabbage, wood-ear, sheared bamboo shoots and classic white-variety button mushrooms, were an extremely flavorful execution of what can be a rather boring dish.
If you can turn mu shu chicken or pork into interesting dishes, your restaurant is probably a big winner.
While Mr. Zhang’s offers a variety of American as well as Oriental desserts (as well as an expansive cocktail menu in addition to traditional Asian drinks), this is emphatically a Chinese restaurant – a fine, upscale Chinese restaurant.
This is the second restaurant for Zhang, who earlier opened a more local-oriented restaurant named Uncle Joe’s, also in the northern Palm Beaches. It’s too much to hope that he will someday open a third restaurant in Vero, but in the meantime, the food he is serving on Donald Ross is very much worth the drive
I welcome your comments, and encourage you to send feedback to me at tina@verobeach32963.com.
The reviewer is a beachside resident who dines anonymously at restaurants at the expense of Vero Beach 32963.
Hours
Monday-Thursday, 11 am to 10 pm
Friday-Sunday, 11 am to 11 pm
Bar
Full Bar
Address (MAP)
4650 Donald Ross Road, Palm Beach Gardens, FL.
Telephone: (561) 624-2946
