Chow's Chinese Restaurant
In the late 90s, I would walk past Chow’s, a Cantonese-style Chinese restaurant. It was on my way home from Taft Middle School, so I ate there often when I was younger. It feels like a “hole in the wall,” and yet its consistent, high quality food has kept it around for decades. It's a favorite among friends, family, and those like me in the restaurant industry.
If you haven’t been, let me tell you how to approach this venture. With any family-style shared plates restaurant, the more mouths you have to feed, the better. It’s best to go to Chow’s with a party of four or more, but two could suffice in a pinch. Regardless, you should stop at ten people. It’s the most their largest table can hold comfortably. Yes, you’re limited to nine friends, but it’s the perfect amount of food and courses. Each person should choose a dish of their choice. This makes everyone happy, and if you have a least favorite dish, you can blame the person who ordered it. A soup and a vegetable dish are usually default additional courses, so what we’re talking about is roughly twelve amazing, mouth-watering dishes on an oversized Lazy Susan, to be shared family-style amongst ten people and maybe a toddler or two for roughly $13-$18 per person before gratuity. Everyone in my group is always ready to join me, even with only a half hour’s notice.
Let’s talk about what to order. Sure, you can get your typical American Chinese take-out dishes like sweet & sour chicken (I love the pork version from here), General Tso’s chicken, or lo mein. However, when you dine at Chow’s, you should go for the more authentic dishes. If you can get a large group together, these are the dishes I recommend ordering: start the feast with Westlake style beef soup. It’s a slightly heavier bodied soup with egg whites, minced beef, cilantro, and white pepper. Think egg drop soup, but much better. One bowl will serve between two and ten people, depending on how much you want to eat. For your mains, get the steamed chicken with ginger scallion sauce, orange peel beef, steamed fish filet with ginger-scallion, and water spinach with shrimp paste – if you’re not into shrimp paste or funk, try it with the garlic sauce. Here’s a pro-tip: spoon some of the sauce from the steamed fish onto your steamed rice instead of soy sauce. The stir-fried beef flat noodles (beef ho fun on the menu) are a must; salt & pepper anything is excellent – my favorites are the tofu, squid, pork spareribs, and head-on, shell-on shrimp. These items are deep-fried before they hit the blistering hot wok with salt, pepper, onions, and jalapeños. Also, the seafood and tofu hotpot and the salty fish fried rice are fantastic. Depending on availability, and if you have some extra cash to spend, you should 100% splurge on the lobster Hong Kong style. You will not regret it. The live lobster is pulled from the water tank, cut into pieces, dredged in starch, deep-fried, then tossed in the wok with minced pork, onions, and chili peppers. The rest of your selection is up to you. You can’t go wrong with anything on the menu. The flavors in all these dishes are pure comfort and delight. But, just a warning, you’ll probably need a nap or early bedtime after your meal.
Clearly, I love their food, but I also appreciate their late hours. Restaurants are a labor of love that will never get old, but when you’ve been on your feet for twelve hours and have gotten crushed by never ending orders being spit from the kitchen printer, you want to leave your restaurant and have someone else cook for you in theirs. Chow’s comes in clutch to help me and anyone else facing down a long day to ease the stress, pain, or frustrations from that shift before you do it all over again the next day. It’s magical how sitting down at those brown tables with gold inlay can comfort you.
> Chow’s Chinese Restaurant, 3033 N. May Avenue, Oklahoma City; (405) 949-1663.
