In the early '80s, Panda Express revolutionized the Chinese food industry in this country. Then came P.F. Chang's, an upscale bistro serving mildly Americanized spin-offs of traditional Chinese dishes. Both have been smash hits, changing the way we eat Asian food.
The next wave of Chinese restaurants may be Pei Wei Asian Diner, a casual noodle and stir-fry house started by P.F. Chang's, a concept that has swollen to more than 30 locations in five states.
The Henderson location is Nevada's first, and it is always packed for lunch, with a line snaking toward the front entrance. Customers queue up, and when they reach the cashier, they order, receive a red plastic number to mount on whatever table they choose, and wait for the food to come up from the kitchen.
It's all done with speed and cheer, and the restaurant is so boisterous that it is also kid friendly. A child can squawk his brains out in here, and it is just part of the din.
This is a nice looking place, done in art nouveau reds and browns, and there is an outdoor patio for those who want a quieter experience. Servers are young and enthusiastic, and they come to the table genuinely interested in how everything is. They bring chopsticks, Chinese mustard, chili sauce and orange slices, and the food is prepared speedily, by a team of well-trained chefs. That's the good news.
The bad is that much of what is on Pei Wei's menu is distressingly sweet. I realize this is what some market study recommended, and you cannot blame a business for doing what makes it successful. According to Greg Criser, writing in the book Fat Land, fully 60 percent of Americans are overweight, and the excessive consumption of sugar is the chief culprit. I'm mindful of a speech made by former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, in which he stated that sugar and caffeine would be by prescription only if they had been put on the market today. The choice is yours.
Having said all that, a lot of this food is tasty. Unlike at a Panda Express, there really is crabmeat in the crab wontons, crispy little things with a cream-cheese filling. (Panda has since changed the name of their crab Rangoon to cream cheese Rangoon.) Pei Wei spring rolls are nice, too, crunchy cylinders stuffed with cabbage, carrot, shiitake mushrooms and glass noodles, and only sweet if dipped in the sweet and sour sauce that accompanies them.
Vietnamese chicken salad rolls, Asian wraps usually made with pork or shrimp in Vietnamese restaurants, have peanuts and mint leaves added to the filling, but as they are not deep fried, they make a light, healthy choice.
What annoys me is that the salad choices are both unavoidably cloying. Order spicy chicken salad and it is loaded with pieces of sugary stir-fried chicken. Asian chopped chicken salad is made with shredded chicken, but the sesame-ginger dressing is so sweet it makes your teeth hurt.
The next section of the menu deals with noodle and rice bowls, enormous enough to share. I like soba-miso bowl, red miso with mixed veggies and a pile of buckwheat noodles, and Pei Wei fried rice, available with chicken or beef, and for $1 more, with shrimp or scallops.
But the Pei Wei pad Thai is pre-mixed, with too much sweet and sour sauce, and the sweet soy glaze in the teriyaki bowl is overwhelming. Dan dan noodles, a northern Chinese dish normally made with minced pork, uses minced chicken instead. The shrimp with lobster sauce bowl isn't particularly sweet, but doesn't have much flavor, either.
Signature dishes are stir-frys, based on sauce and a choice of meats. There are 11 different sauces and frankly, not to belabor a point, all of the variations I sampled struck me as over the top. Beef and broccoli, though tasty with slices of beef with a caramelized coating to make them almost crunchy, is just too much so.
Asian coconut curry, probably my favorite among the stir-frys, makes adequate use of rich, green, coconut curry sauce; ginger; basil; red peppers; onions and long beans. But it would be ever so much better if it had been more restrained. It is delicious with the big chunks of white meat chicken or perhaps the plump shrimp served here.
But honey-seared Hoisin explosion, and even spicy Korean, though quite tasty, are all defined by their sweetness. Maybe the company will consider a few more options for people like me in the near future, because the ingredients are all fresh and of good quality.
Does anyone care? Hey, maybe not. Most of the people I talked to left with a smile on their face, and business, whenever I've been here, is gangbusters. Like comedian Red Skelton said at movie mogul Harry Cohn's mobbed funeral, "Give the people what they want, and they'll turn out for it."