Savor a big, beautiful array of flavors at Big Bok Choy Bistro
The Oldsmar restaurant sends out affordable and wholesome Asian delights, for eating in or taking out.
By Laura Reiley, Times Food Critic
Published July 12, 2007
Big Bok Choy Bistro
3730 Tampa Road, Oldsmar
(813) 854-1961
Cuisine: Chinese and pan-Asian
Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. daily
Details: AE, MC, V, Dis; reservations accepted; beer and wine
Prices: $9.95-$14.95
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OLDSMAR - I took stock. Recently I visited 10 barbecue joints, then wrote about steak on the grill, followed up with a review of a classic steak house. Next week? Two Brazilian churrascarias. Sure, I'm an unreconstructed carnivore, but this is getting ridiculous.
I need some vegetables, and I need them now.
Luckily, several readers have recommended a year-old Chinese-ish restaurant in Oldsmar called the Big Bok Choy Bistro. I had visions of a little place dwarfed by a bok choy the size of Paul Bunyan, its cluster of crisp, white, tree-trunk-size stems giving way to a canopy of green leaves far overhead. Maybe all of it glistening with soy sauce and a hint of ginger.
As it turned out, I never ate any bok choy - giant or otherwise - at Victoria Tang and Jan Chiu's small, strip-mall restaurant, but it graciously enabled me to get out of my beef rut.
It's a winning formula: Pan-Asian but familiar, dishes are wholesome, veggie-heavy and modestly seasoned. Suitable for takeout, it's the kind of food busy families pine to open up and dish out after a long day.
No mystery meat, nothing sitting in a slick of oil - just the snap of fresh green beans, the zing of lemongrass and perfume of garlic, and nurturing, rib-sticking heaps of pan-fried noodles.
As Tang explains, it's mostly Chinese, but with a smattering of Thai, Vietnamese and Japanese favorites. The little square storefront focuses on quick, hot takeout, but eating in can be equally pleasant, the dining room painted a cheery tomato bisque. Service is fast, the Tiger and Kirin Ichiban beers $4.50 and $3.95, respectively cold and quenching.
The house eggroll (two for $3.95) is prototypical, featuring crunchy cabbage and ground pork in a golden, cleanly fried wrapper. Minced pork figures again in a sextet of potstickers ($4.25), their sturdy, wok-fried pastry cradling a simple filling, brightened by a tangy soy dipping sauce.
Chicken in lettuce cups ($7.95) is a nice counterpoint to all that carbo-loading, its chicken jazzed up with sauteed red and green peppers and a sprinkling of chopped peanut. More peppers lend a little panache to our favorite appetizer, the salt and pepper calamari ($7.95), greaseless fried tentacles and rings paired with a zippy chile sauce.
Soups wander all over Asia, from Vietnamese pho to Japanese miso ($3.50, a touch demure in the flavor department) and laudable Chinese hot and sour ($2.95), a thick, deep brown broth with a real hot kick - and a fair amount of sour - stippled with egg, tofu, bamboo shoot and other usual suspects.
While the soups of all nations are all clustered together on the menu, classic versions of Chinese dishes, Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese get their own sequestered boxes: teriyaki dinners, sushi rolls, pad Thai and chow fun.
Still, the nations' foods play nicely together. Teriyaki chicken ($12.95) brings a fan of sliced chicken breast with a ramekin of concentrated teriyaki sauce, a bowl of delicious and homey lo mein, a generous handful of perfectly steamed broccoli and another bowl of fried rice. Oh, and a bowl of miso soup.
It's a big meal for one, especially if you throw in a simple California maki ($4.95), well rolled and satisfying with the pop of smelt roe and the crunch of cuke. Or maybe pair the maki with an order of lightly fried ginger shrimp ($14.95), a sweet-spicy tomato sauce coating the bouncy, fresh-tasting crustaceans.
Texture is also a prime allure of the kitchen's moo shu veggies ($10.95), which arrive with four warm pancakes and a side of tangy plum sauce. The filling is resplendent with spongy woodear mushroom, crisp green onion and roughly chopped cabbage and wisps of tender egg - each Chinese burrito package the kind of veggie indulgence that seems the furthest thing from abstemious.
Sigh, and now back to the beef beat.
Laura Reiley dines anonymously and unannounced. The St. Petersburg Times pays all expenses. A restaurant's advertising has nothing to do with selection for review or the assessment. Reiley can be reached at (727) 892-2293 or lreiley@sptimes.com.