positively fine changs

that is my interpretation of the P.F. in P.F. Chang's. We went to the china bistro while we were in Atlantic City and staying in the Tropicana. It was a fairly busy weekend down at the casinos so we made a reservation. When we got there, something happened with the reservation, but it wasn't the restaurant's fault. The concierge told us 8, but in fact they made the reservation for 8:30. So the hostess said that she didn't have anything for us immediately but there was room at the bar so we sat there while we waited for the reservation.

After a few minutes of cozy-ing up to the bartender, we decided that the bar was the place for us as the downstairs dining area seemed a little louder than we cared to enjoy at that moment. This worked out just fine. Somehow in this entire evening, I was able to talk my carnivore boyfriend to go totally vegetarian for this meal (not like he's never done that, but it's just a little unusual especially when dining out).

We started off with some tofu lettuce wraps. It is a tofu and soy sauce mixture and some other vegetables like red onion and water chestnuts. The idea is to wrap them up in some iceberg lettuce leaves and eat them like a taco. This was pretty good, a little heavy on the sauce but overall very tasty. My lettuce wrap fell apart at one point and that didn't make me too happy - some handi-wipes for the messy eaters (ahem, me) would have been useful. :)

Next we ordered 4 entree's / sides - sauteed spinach, asparagus, coconut curry vegetables and garlic noodles. Now, I'm looking at this stuff on line right now and I'm seeing that all of the calories, fat, and other food information is provided on line (YIKES!!). Well it was vacation after all but oh my gosh did we eat a ton of calories. I'm glad that we were too full for dessert - ha! So, of the entree dishes that we got, everything was mostly good. The asparagus dish was a little salty; however the spinach dish was particularly bland. My favorites were the coconut curry vegetables and the garlic noodles.

On the plus side, the price was extremely reasonable compared to the amount of food and quality of food provided. Overall, I would say it was a successful outing, but don't expect magnificance.