Wang's Garden
6950 Blanco
San Antonio
(210) 366-4508
Wang's Garden, which presents an “authentic Chinese” face to the world, is nevertheless a kind of paradox. The menu is printed in Chinese, English, and Korean (the take-out version even omits the Chinese), and many dishes seem to suggest a subtle influence of Korean cuisine. You can (and should), for example, ask for kim chee, the Korean pickled cabbage specialty, to add into your otherwise Chinese-sounding noodles with chop suey and soup. As it turns out, the restaurant has ties, either real or in spirit, to similar establishments in China that cater to a Korean clientele. You can tell which dishes are especially favored there by checking out the Korean script on the right hand side of each page: Where there's a blank, the dish doesn't make the Korean cut. The decor at Wang's Garden gets its own chile accent in the form of red columns that play against walls. Scrolls, a few screens, and a lot of plastic plants and posies constitute the rest of the decor — not exactly the expected framework for a cuisine that turns out to be both lusty and sophisticated. But that's paradox for you — and paradox is, after all, one of the philosophical tenets of Chinese food.;- Ron Bechtol
