Veteran restaurateur Mike Chen serves up the cuisine of Shanghai at Chow’s Kitchen in Squirrel Hill, just down the block from his popular Everyday Noodles.
A New Chapter at Chow’s Kitchen in Squirrel Hill
With 12 eateries to his credit during a 40-year career, Chen was eager to introduce another Chinese culinary tradition to the area.
The impetus came from Steve Chow, Chen’s longtime business partner and executive chef at Everyday Noodles, which they opened in 2012. They perceived that local diners were more than ready for something beyond the familiar Chinese-American and Szechuan fare.
Shanghai-Inspired Menu Highlights
Menu items range from appetizers like jellyfish salad with soy sauce and panfried pork dumplings to entrees that span vegetarian, seafood, and meatbased offerings. Dishes include Wuxi spareribs slowly braised in soy, star anise, cinnamon, and rock sugar; Shanghai-style stew with Virginia ham, pork belly, tofu, and bamboo shoots; squid with pickled cabbage; mapo tofu made with tongue-numbing Sichuan peppercorns; and shrimp-stuffed eggplant pot stickers.
The menu includes plenty of vegan options, including braised seitan, wood ear fungus, and winter bamboo shoots, and a next-level stir-fry of thin-sliced Japanese kabocha squash, wood ear mushrooms, macadamia nuts, and lotus root.
Menu staples include the hand-pulled noodles and xiaolongbao soup dumplings of Everyday Noodles.
A Redesigned Dining Space
Chow’s Kitchen is located in the former Dagu Rice Noodle space, which has been redecorated to include a scenic wallpaper mural on one wall and soft lighting.
This latest venture caps lengthy careers in the restaurant industry for both Chen and Chow, both born in Taiwan. Chen began in the 1980s to develop a chain of China Palace eateries in the suburbs around Pittsburgh and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He later opened the pan-Asian Tamari restaurants in Lawrenceville and Wexford with his son, Allen.
Story by Deborah Weisberg