Chez Wou Chinese Restaurant Reviewed March / April 2009
The dining room at Chez Wou an oriental fine dining experience.
Vivid colours, intense flavours, unique textures and distinctive ingredients are all key elements of Chinese cuisine – ethnically diverse, it is a cuisine that dramatically varies from region to region, as visually appealing as it is mouth-wateringly flavourful. Its roots steeped in history, the West has enthusiastically and passionately embraced this exotic yet uncomplicated cuisine, not only for its undeniable palatable qualities, but also for its recognized health and nutritional benefits. Our faraway island now enjoys that same enthusiastic passion with Chez Wou Chinese Restaurant, Provo’s own ‘oriental fine dining’ experience... a stroke of good fortune, indeed!
Authenticity is a fundamental and essential ingredient of any cuisine, and at Chez Wou, Chef David Chen hails from the island of Taiwan, a culture where daily life revolves around food, where rather than greeting on the street with the customary and traditional, “How are you?”, in Taiwan it’s, “Have you eaten yet?” Half a world away from his island on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean, Chef Chen brings his talents here, where he artistically and expertly creates a whole new dining sensation for our island with his singularly outstanding Chinese cuisine.
A sample of appetizers tray.
An abundance of oriental décor and furnishings are a perceptible contrast to Provo’s usual tropical trimmings. The spacious take-out area is filled with a multicoloured selection of decorative Chinese vases and traditional wall art that continues throughout the restaurant – the intricately carved jade wall hanging in the dining room is stunning. In fact, even the ceiling exudes the oriental feel featuring tiles stamped with a dragon motif. The expansive dining room offers tables for 2 to 10 with two large tables including a ‘lazy Susan’ to ease the distribution of sharing dishes amongst large groups. Tablecloths add a nice touch with ‘Chez Wou’ monogrammed dinnerware and black lacquer chopsticks, a centuries-old custom. I must confess, I always begin with the chopsticks... eager and raring to go for the full experience... but the food is so incredibly scrumptious and tasty, I surreptitiously switch to the good old Western fork for speed and accuracy!
Be forewarned... making menu choices will be a convoluted conundrum. Beginning with soups and appetizers, navigate your way through pork, beef, chicken, shrimp, fish, conch and squid each prepared several different ways and each featuring a different vegetable, sauce or accompaniment. Complete your meal with several tofu/vegetable selections and six kinds of fried rice and fried noodles. All of our selections were displayed with the epitome of presentation with everything from baskets carved from a green pepper, a blooming rose carrot and even a tomato butterfly!
The table with entrees arranged at Chez Wou.
Our foursome truly at an impasse, Chef Chen graciously prepared an assortment of appetizers for our table including Spring Rolls, Fried Shrimp, Fried Squid and Fried Wontons. The Spring Rolls were ‘habit forming’, crispy without any greasiness and very tasty. “I could just order a platter of these!” The Fried Shrimp were butterflied, and oh, so absolutely tender, succulent and full of flavour. “I could take a box home”. You see where I’m going with this??? The Fried Squid (calamari) with that undeniable nutty flavour were fabulous – perfectly tender and mild. Finally, the Fried Wontons - a noodle dough dumpling filled with pork - “crunchy outside and tender inside” the texture and taste of this delicious morsel was a table favourite.
For our main selections, we each chose a dish we were intrigued to experience, along with a fried rice and noodle selection, keen to sample from what everyone else ordered. All for one, and one for all! They weren’t kidding about the Sizzling Shrimp - conversation came to a standstill when we heard its alluringly audible ‘sizzling’ all the way from across the room, arriving at our table smoldering with incredible aromas that teasingly wafted their way around the table while we patiently waited for the opportunity to ‘dig in’! Plump, moist, delicious shrimp were bathed in an incredible sauce with firm tomatoes, peas and onions. The Stir Fry Beef was covered in a rich and creamy curry sauce with an enjoyable curry ‘kick’ – thin, very tender slices of beef with crisp carrots, green peppers and onions.
Whole Fish Szechuan style.
If you are one of those diners who have a propensity to seek out a spicy dish – I have the perfect recommendation for you: Gung Pao Squid; meaty and tender squid are submerged in a fabulous sauce and topped with whole peanuts with “watch out for the dried red peppers!” enough to make your blocked sinus passages eternally open! A word of advice; don’t try to drown the heat with water... eat rice – it will soak up the heat that is generally in the oil. Judging from the enviable gazes around me, not to mention the perceptible salivation factor, my dish was unanimously voted the ultimate delicacy... Lobster Szechuan. This is one of those lobster dishes that make you wish that lobster did not have a season! Positively the show-stealer, this dish arrived in the company of the entire lobster shell for a stunning presentation. That distinctive and instantly recognizable sweet and engaging taste of Caribbean Spiny Lobster, mild and mellow perfectly harmonized with the heavenly heat of the Szechuan sauce — chili peppers, Szechuan peppers and garlic. The real deal... sadly, there was none to take home! A small bowl of classic white rice came with our main dishes, in addition to our requested Shrimp Fried Rice, savoury and full of flavours with corn, peas, carrots and onions and Singapore Rice Noodles – what has become a preferred choice of mine... a julienne of vegetables with onions, shrimp and tender rice noodles, similar to an angel hair pasta, smothered in a delicious sauce conveyed comments like, “I just savoured those,” “It’s a hit,” and “Love ’em”. Finally, our server presented us with a bamboo steamer filled with Chinese Steamed Bread – a soft dough dumpling with an unexpected and very tasty pork filling.
Chez Wou is open seven days and for carry out at Central Square.
I’ll be the first to admit that, like the Taiwanese, my life too revolves around food – and it certainly is a pleasure to know that the unforgettable taste of a culmination of centuries of diversity and culinary evolution are now able to be relished right here at Chez Wou. So... have you eaten yet?
Open seven days a week for lunch and dinner. Dine-in or take-out. Check out their daily lunch combo specials at a terrific price. Also available for catering and private parties.
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