In the large interior, red and black chairs, green booths, and white-clothed tables fill the space in dots of simplicity. The bar lies at the back of the restaurant, hidden to most of the dining room by a curved wooden paneled wall.
It’s a space that felt almost empty despite the dozens of people inside, and my friend and I sat happily by ourselves as we looked over the expansive menu in the dim lights of the quiet restaurant.
I had expected the food to be good, and the quality of the Chinese food here is no surprise to locals. Tsang’s has won numerous honors for its food, in both the 2009 and 2011 Best of the South Shore awards in South Shore Living magazine, and the 2011 Reader’s Choice Award for Restaurants on WickedLocal.com.
“In the South Shore alone, there are over 500 Chinese food restaurants. So to be number one [makes us] really proud,” said manager Wayne Tsang, who helps run the family business.
Similar to their Duxbury sister restaurant, also called Tsang’s and run by members of the Tsang family, the food was good without fail.
We ordered the pu pu platter for two ($23) to get a variety of food in one dish. The beef teriyaki was succulent and tender, the fried shrimp and fried chicken breaded proportionately and sinfully delicious. The crab Rangoon was warm and perfectly crisp, and the egg rolls, chicken wings, and spareribs too plentiful to finish with four people, never mind two.
Prices for entrees are reasonable, ranging from $8 to $12 for a heaping platter of food. The larger portions were evident in the chicken curry ($10.65), a no-nonsense, well-seasoned dish complete with mounds of chicken and chunks of sweet bell peppers and onions.
It was spicier than I thought, yet also sweet, with just the right amount of sauce to cover all the food but not have the pieces swimming in it.
In an attempt to branch out from the usual fare, my friend and I also ordered two types of cooked sushi.
I have had sushi once in my life in a large restaurant in Boston, and decided then and there I didn’t like it. I expected this experience to be the same, and left it up to my sushi-aficionado friend to choose something.
