City: Jacksonville, Florida
Visit Date: 12/30/11
Food Type: Asian (Chinese)
Meal: Lunch
Address: 13947 Beach Blvd #110, Jacksonville, FL 32224
Food Rating: 8/10
Environment Rating: 9/10
Service Rating: 10/10
Overall: 27/30 (Excellent)
tl;dr: Nice Restaurant. (Asian people actually eat here) Come early as it's packed at certain times of day. Watch out for over-greasy foods.
In my travels to various places, I often get the chance to back track per say and visit some of the locations I've been to in the past. And now that I have a working camera phone and a desire to write about it, My meals at some of the restaurants I often frequent can finally be cataloged for personal interests.
To open, Mr. Chan's is small off the beaten path place. It's on Beach Boulevard and though it's relatively easy to locate since their sign is reasonably sized, the locale gives it a nice out of the way feel. My mom actually frequents this place as she works down the road from it and would likewise give a pretty good rating for it.
But onto the actual restaurant! Mr. Chan's has a truly Asian feel. Unlike sell-out Asian restaurants that feature stereotypical fat buddahs or well ya know what I mean, the plastic crap that you'd see at a flea market, Mr. Chan's keeps with the slightly upper-class feel of wooden ornaments and paintings on the wall. The chairs are quality wood and though the addition of some seat cushions would make my personal comfort better (suffering from lumbago still), I am quite satisfied with the table settings and the general view of the positioning in the restaurant. There aren't many tables/chairs in the restaurant so crowding is an issue at times. As is noise when large groups are present but it's all tolerable.
Our server, Helen was polite and courteous and genuinely seemed as if she wanted to be of service. Our meal started with several twisted cruellers (油条). And though they're generally eaten as a breakfast item in China, they're a bitch to make (deep frying forms oil smoke) and without practice, the strips of dough used to fry them often come out poorly. I personally didn't partake upon them but the family devoured them with much gusto.
As for the dishes ordered, our lunch was comprised of 4 general dishes. A garlic sauteed eggplant, some varient of beef noodle soup, squid with chive flowers and half of a roast duck.
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| Garlic Sauteed Eggplant |
Mr. Chan's however was a bit lacking in my opinion. Generally the flavor mix for this dish should be spicy, savory with a robust but non-overpowering touch of garlic. The preparation varies greatly from location to location and that I won't fault them on. In particular, the dish we ordered was on the sweet side. This doesn't pair well with the fact that Mr. Chan's preparation style involves deep frying their eggplant first. As such though the coloration of the finished product was quite tempting to the eyes, the flavor was lacking :(. I will say that it was at the very least ok and my younger brother seemed to enjoy the sweet-ness. I however would have preferred a spicier or more savory dish. Any flavor of garlic that was present in the presentation was dimmed by the mix of sugar and not-so great hot sauce. It could easily have been improved on by draining some of the excess oil before plating.
On to the next dish!
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| Squid with Chive Flowers |
And finally:
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| Roast Duck |
The duck presentation at Mr. Chan's goes for the minimalist approach. The duck is most likely roasted/baked/broiled for x amount of time, taken out of the oven and cleaved into chunks before a flash fry to make sure the skin is extra crispy. I didn't ask the chefs about this, so I could be 100% wrong, but given my background in Chinese cookery, I'd suspect that my suppositions have some validation.
Greasy. In a word the duck was greasy. As I enjoyed that hacked up duck leg with a smear of salty-sweet hoison sauce, the only word that would come to mind is that this duck is greasy. Where I had expected duck to have a fat quality; this one was literally dripping and as I gnashed into it's leg, a dribbly mixture of whatever it was fried in + duck fat slowly ran from the corners of my mouth. I paused midway as the gristle had decidingly lodged in my teeth and as I sat there irate over the piece of duck that refused to get out my teeth, I reached for a napkin to remove the mess.
That about sums up the duck. It's really nothing special. The ducks they use are a bit tough, but I expected about as much. Flavor-wise the duck was reasonably seasoned, though an extra sprinkle of salt wouldn't have hurt. Paired with the hoison sauce it would be quite delicious if one can get over the copious amounts of fat s/he was consuming.
All in all I like this restaurant. The food I regularly order is always available on the menu. The staff are polite and seem reasonably knowledgeable on the dishes they serve. And so with my blessing I rate this establishment with an Excellent. It's not perfect, but I don't expect I'll ever find any place truly perfect. There's always room for improvement.
