Have you had that moment when you go into a restaurant and you mightily struggle to decide what to order because everything on the menu looks and sounds so delicious? Throughout our culinary journey, my wife and I usually know what we want relatively quickly and, very thankfully, we rarely don’t see eye or eye on what to order. One cuisine that we struggle from time to time though is Chinese unless we know in advance based on our past experience at a restaurant that we will only order certain items like dim sums or Peking duck. We visited Chang Chang, a first DC project from the acclaimed chef Peter Chang who has a collection of popular restaurants in Maryland and Virginia, last winter for a weekend dim sum brunch and thought the food was generally delicious. This past September, we decided to come back for a full dinner. Unlike the concise dim sum-focused menu, we were greeted with a rather expansive menu with mouth-watering descriptions of dishes (with varying degrees of spiciness based on the number of peppers next to each dish) and it took us a fairly long time to decide what we wanted to order. At the end, we were fairly happy with our selections.

When a celebrity chef with multiple restaurants under his portfolio opens a new project, Jun and I more often than not become wary that the chef might’ve just opened the place to expand his portfolio without careful preparation. After a few bites of refreshing garlic cucumber salad with scallion pesto, we knew Chang Chang was not just another empire-builder type of restaurant. Jun, who has exceptionally high standards when it comes to pork soup dumplings (thanks to all the top-level dumplings from New York’s Chinatown establishments like Shanghai 21), was complimentary of the dumplings at the restaurant, and we both couldn’t stop eating the chili wonton with addictive mala-based sauce. If you are interested in trying dishes on the spicier side, I suggest trying dry fried eggplant and mushroom, marked one of the specialties at the restaurant and using Amish-grown shiitakes.

I wished the sizzling three pepper chicken with jalapenos and peppers came with a bit spicier flavor, but it is still a good dish to share with a group of friends at the table, especially with green beans as a side dish. The one dish that really intrigued us was the lamb chops flambe (yes, it does come out with flambe-style flame) on a bed of spicy potatoes with chili and cumin sauce. Initially, Jun was quite taken aback by the rather pungent smell, but once she took a bite of these deliciously grilled lamb chops she couldn’t stop savoring them and neither could I. If you still have some extra room in your stomach, I highly recommend getting at least one dessert from the list prepared by pastry chef Pichet Ong. After all the rich and spicy food, Jun and I gladly enjoyed some refreshingly citrusy passionfruit pie with calamansi-lime infused filling in a rice flour Graham cracker crust.

Getting a reservation at Chang Chang won’t be too challenging so long as you book a few days in advance. The restaurant has clean and sleek décor as well as full beverage list with thoughtfully crafted cocktails and teas. One regret that we had after walking out from Chang Chang was we didn’t bring a friend or two along to try as many plates as we would’ve liked. I don’t know how quickly the menu at the restaurant changes, but based on its description that the one we had during our visit was for fall and winter 2023 season, I suspect it won’t stay static. In any event, we were both very glad to have found out what a proper dining experience at Chang Chang would be like and how rewarding it can be. We won’t hesitate to come back to try other dishes on the menu in the near future.

KenScale: 8.0/10 (Jun’s Score: 8.0/10)

Address: 1200 19th Street NW, Washington, DC 20036

Website: https://changchangdc.com/

Reservation via Tock