Skip to main contentWhen I first discovered Tina Tang's restaurant several months ago, I wondered how she could have been in business for 10 years without anyone I knew in the city ever having heard of her. A Taste of China, tucked into a small shopping center off Boones Ferry Road, has passed completely below the local media's radar, but still the throngs of faithful suburban customers flock to Tang's eatery to inhale her talent and her warm neighborly hospitality. The bittersweet part of my recent find is that Tang is planning to chuck her successful restaurant in an attempt to reinvent her life. For someone who's just started to take on the nonchalance of a regular, this almost seems like a betrayal.
Tang, who left Taiwan when she was 17, came to Lake Oswego from New York City, where her former husband's family ran restaurants. "My father-in-law was one of the top four Chinese chefs in the city," she explains, "and that's where I learned everything." The "everything" she knows is considerable. It's not just that the dishes are well prepared and beautifully presented. It's not just that the sauces, which are her domain, have precise and delicate flavors. It's mainly that she does something I've only seen practiced in fine French restaurants--she actually helps customers stitch together a harmonious dining experience. It occurred to me as I worked with her over a recent order how likely it is that no two customers are ever eating the same combinations at the same time at this place.
Here's how Tang keeps each diner's experience unique: I pick an entree and she starts right in. "You've selected pork, which has a brown and spicy sauce. I recommend the Chinese cabbage dish with a clear sauce. It's cooked just so to give it a creaminess. Of course, there is never any cream in Chinese cooking, but the creamy taste of the cabbage will balance the heat of the pork. It also has shiitake mushrooms and ham to lend smokiness. You'll like it. I've used fresh peppers for the heat instead of chili powder, in order to give the heat more flavor. It's unusual, and you'll like that, too, because it's different." Of course, she's right. And in Tang's juxtaposition, balance and opposition, each dish is a marvelous reflection of her own generous grace.
"I recommend tea to be served by the main course: It will help balance heat, and aid digestion," she adds, before she takes the order back to the cooks.
After she's introduced me to a new dish or combination, if I come back the next time and ask for it again, she nixes my request. "I have a rule," she explains, "that you can't repeat the same dish for at least three weeks." Even if I come back with new customers and plead, "They've never been here before, they've never had the pork," she's still unrelenting.
Tang runs a disciplined kitchen. She is picky about ingredients, follows the seasons and takes no short cuts. She manages the staff in the front and back of the house. "It's not easy being a woman owning a business," she says. "I've earned respect from the cooks because I'm smart and I make the workplace good for my employees."
She's already negotiated the sale of the restaurant, and it's likely the place will change hands after Jan. 1. Why would anyone leave a business she's obviously so passionate about, especially one that, after years of building a customer base, is finally successful? Tang says she wants a break from the responsibility and demands of running a restaurant. She's worked day and night to make the place successful. She feels her two children, now grown, were sometimes latchkey kids, something she regrets. Her big dream now is to have the luxury to go to New York and feed workers at Ground Zero ("the workers don't get really good Chinese food there," she says) and to be a philanthropist of sorts. And she says she might like to create a business bottling a line of her special sauces, the secret of her cooking. I tasted one that involved sesame and garlic, lightened with broth instead of oil to make it lean. The sauce was delicious: If I could buy something like it on a supermarket shelf, my life would sure be easier. Even if Tang leaves the restaurant, it's probably not the last we'll see of her on the food scene.
A regular customer told me a story about Tang that seems to reflect her almost mythic persona: One winter, an ice storm felled trees in Lake Oswego. A family called Tang to order food, but they said a tree was blocking the road and they couldn't get out of their neighborhood. The trapped people asked Tang if she'd deliver to the tree, where they'd be waiting for her. When Tang asked if they needed anything else, the callers added that they had no milk. Tang prepared the food, stopped for some milk, drove to the fallen tree and passed the bags across to the grateful people on the other side. They weren't even regular customers before the tree fell. When asked why she would put herself out so, she replied, "I have a pioneering spirit. And I like to test out the four-wheel drive on my car." Yes, we'll hear from Tina Tang again.
15450 Boones Ferry Road, Lake Oswego, 699-5056
Lunch Monday-Friday, dinner daily.
Moderate $$
Read the Taste of China write-up from this year's Restaurant Guide
"Good food makes people talk," Tang says as a way of explaining how she gets to know her customers so well. "I even know the names of all their dogs."
Tang says the Chinese characters used in her restaurant's logo can be interpreted to mean "go with the flow."
WWeek 2015