Pierre's Express Chang Chinese Restaurant in San Mateo?

[Melanie Wong]

In downtown San Mateo today, I noticed a small Cantonese restaurant, Pierre's Express Chang, and wondered what 'hounds think of this spot.

Awning
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3216/2788982810_1b1c6b3ca1_m.jpg

Nothing about it really stands out, but the sign in Spanish indicating that it would be open seven days a week starting in June struck me as charming.

Entrance
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3175/2...

The posted menu in English looks like the Cantonese and Chinese-American standards, but it also has a menu in Chinese. The deep-fried flounder for $6.50 sounds like a deal, if it's good. Free delivery too.

Is this a cheap and cheerful Chinese option in San Mateo?

[rworange]

Can't answer your question, but the menu has a menu misprint that almost sent me to Goggle unitil I thought to myself ... idiot ... Fried Egg Plants ... it was the capitalization and space that confused me.

Learned one thing that was google worthy to me. They have woh choy, which is like some sort of Chinese prix-fixe? Three dishes for $15. This seemed like a good description of that type of meal ...
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071211142618AAJatx9

"many of the Chinese restaurants in China Town have a daily special. It used to be called "Woh Choy". You'll see ordinary-sized Xeroxed sheets of paper with Chinese writing on them in the window. The chef goes down to the produce, fish and meat markets early in the morning, picks what looks good to him. You get one dish per person plus rice and soup; that is, if there are four of you, four dishes; six, six dishes, etc."

A chowhound post from Ontario said "You should also consider the "woh choy" set menus that are like $20 for 3 people (and like increments of $5 per extra person/dishes) and you can choose from a list of 30 dishes"

I think this might be it on the website ... but in Chinese
http://www.222.to/pierresexpresschang/menu8.asp

Someone on the web that they have daily specials like lotus root and sparerib stew. I like lotus root.

For your further amusement. There must be a Mexican connection there somewhere since it is listed in a Latino restaurant site.
http://san.francisco.guia-de-restaura...

[Melanie Wong]

On this board, we've spelled it "wo choy" (和菜), and "wo" rhymes with "raw". It means family meal and refers to a set menu based on the number in your party, served family style for a fixed price.

I have to disagree with one point on the yahoo site. Around here, rice is rarely included, and one will pay from 75¢ to $1.25 per person for steamed rice over and above the wo choy fixed price. I recall a discussion on one of the other boards from some incensed to have been charged for rice on a visit to the Bay Area, but that's SOP here. These days with rapidly escalating price increases, I have the feeling that the rice charge may be main proportion of the profit that restaurants are earning.

Here are a couple of my old posts on the wo choy concept -
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/18061#55737
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/2606...

And if you search this board, you'll find many reports on wo choy menus and deals. My recent reports for Toon Kee, Riverside, iRestaurant, and Sam's all included a wo choy meal. Great Eastern has the Chef's Chinatown Selection set menu for $88 that is a particularly good value and often recommended here.

In the "three-fer" structure, Yee's, Blue Sky, Chef Liu, Silver Lake, New Yong Kang, and others have gotten air time.

Hope we'll hear from someone who has tried Pierre's Express Chang.

[Chandavkl]

Like you I've only stopped to take a peek inside the restaurant. However I wasn't as observant as you were and didn't see the Chinese menu, thereby assuming it was just another Americanized Chinese place. With all of the other options in the immediate area I hadn't even thought about going back to try it until your post.

[Melanie Wong]

When I saw the name on the awning, I wondered if it had been named Pierre's Fast Chang, as a riff on PF Chang's, at some point. Besides the menus taped in the front window in my photo, there were more on display in the door way that were different colors and presumably offer other things.

[Mark P]

I like Pierre's. I live in downtown San Mateo and it's one of my go-to Chinese restaurants in San Mateo (along with Little Sichuan). Basically, it's a decent place I go to when I want I want something, don't want to think about it too much, and don't mind something unexceptional. (In my mind, that makes it analogous to Hotaru for Japanese.)

I've had better luck with the white-board "lunch" specials than items on its regular menu. (I put lunch in quotes because I often order them for dinner.)

The Pierre's most commendable feature is its ability to make fish moist and very soft. (I think the term is velveting.) They do it with meats too, though not as consistently. I order either the "mixed vegetables with cod", the "spicy eggplant with fish", or the "chicken with double mushrooms"; all of these tend to demonstrate the effect.

I also enjoy the "string beans with pork spare ribs." These are thick Chinese string beans, often cooked to be soft but not floppy, with toothsome pork ribs (the kind that are like 1.5 inch disks with a bone in the center) nicely flavored with fat throughout. (I don't like chunks of fat, but these have the fat in the meat, so it doesn't bother me.)

I don't want to be too effusive about this place. I'm happy to have it nearby, but if I was driving to San Mateo from more than one town away and looking for Chinese food, I'd probably go for more distinctive food such as that available at Little Sichuan or Everyday Beijing (which seems to be a board favorite, though I'm much more ambivalent) or, for dim sum, Joy Luke Place.

[Melanie Wong]

Mark, many thanks for your thoughtful post and satisfying my curiosity. This sounds just like what I had hoped it might stack up to be. The kind of place you can frequent often for homestyle cooking that offers good value.

I just noticed your post about dill dumplings and thought you might have had them at Sun Tung.

Sun Tung report -
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/45519

[yimster]

I remember Pierre's from twenty years ago when I worked in San Mateo. The dry cooked beef chow fun was great. Not sure it it the same owners.

Remember the rice plate were good too. But that is all I can remember.

[JoyM]

This place has ok, nothing great Chinese food. If you want perfectly serviceable Americanized Chinese food, with a fairly comprehensive menu, this place will do. However, in downtown San Mateo, Joy Luck and Sun Tung are my favorites and much better. (I miss Hakka, which is now a Togos, as if the world needed one more Togos.) There's a few other Chow favorites for Chinese food, mentioned above. Pierre's has one thing going for it that no other Chinese restaurant in San Mateo has -- they deliver. As a displaced New Yorker, I miss food delivery a lot, so this is a big plus.

[Melanie Wong]

Is everything Americanized, even from the menu printed in Chinese? What dishes did you try?