Lunch at Chang’s Garden (Arcadia, CA)

Chang’s Garden is a popular Chinese restaurant in Arcadia, enough so that you could wind up waiting to get seated. We got there early enough that we got seated right away. Within a half hour, the place was packed and customers waiting outside.

A small dish of boiled peanuts was given to every table. Interesting but not relishing, soft in texture (like legumes). The Dong Po (Tung Po on the menu) pork was everything that it was touted to be. The pork belly is about 7 inches square. The waitress cut it into 9 pieces. The pork fat literally melts in your mouth, and the tasty and tender meaty portion shreds nicely. If you have an aversion to melted fat infusing your whole mouth, then you’d probably not appreciate this dish. But friends and I enjoyed it immensely.

Eggplant in Hot Garlic Sauce was a very good dish, vinegary, spicy, slightly sweet and lusciously silky. Some yelpers complained that this dish was too sweet, but I thought it was in perfect balance, definitely not cloyingly sweet.

The Green Beans with Ground Pork was an adequate version, the beans cooked perfectly.

Finally, the Seaweed Fried Fish was extraordinary, the batter, laced with thin ribbons of seaweed, delicate and crispy, and the fish very fresh.

This restaurant deserves a return visit to try other dishes.

627 West Duarte Road
Arcadia, CA 91007