China Wok Will Quickly Win Your Heart

Interviewed by Cuiyin Zhang       Written by Chris Holt

Located in Raleigh, North Carolina, China Wok offers dine-in and take-out services to a loyal and busy community. Its homemade sauces are legendary and its service will earn your respect. China Wok stands out among stiff competition not because of its glitz or glam, but because it does the little things right.

Simple Scene Puts Focus On Food 

China Wok is a casual take-out and dine-in restaurant located in a bustling neighborhood full of businesses and steep competition. The restaurant comfortably fits around thirty diners but is also very popular with patrons taking out their food. The dining area is around 1,200 square feet and is always kept clean and orderly.

The decorations for the restaurant are simple, comfortable, and there’s no lack of traditional Chinese accoutrements. Yang said that a small scale eatery should emphasize the sanitation and food rather than decorations and superficial selling points.

Common Dishes, Uncommon Tastes

China Wok is versed in Americanized Chinese food that caters to the local populations’ diverse palates. Over one hundred items are available on the menu, providing plenty of choices for the customers to choose from.

According to the owner, Yang, the local people are very choosy about what they eat. And while the offerings at China Wok are similar to other Chinese restaurants, the sauces are made to accommodate the locals' preferences. Yang personally supervises the chefs and emphasizes that not only should the dishes taste different, but better than the competitions’.

All of the items on the menu are very popular with customers. But several stand out from the rest: The Scallops & Shrimps with Garlic Sauce is quite famous while the General Tso’s Chicken, Sesame Chicken, and Sweet & Sour Chicken are all very popular. Yang also finds that the Happy Family and Seafood Delight do very well.

Each dish is prepared differently and presents a unique taste. The Scallops & Shrimps w. Garlic Sauce include scallops, shrimps, broccoli and green peppers. These eclectic ingredients are stir fried with homemade garlic sauce.

The Seafood Delight is always a real winner, combining fresh, fragrant, salty and sweet tastes with a carmine color. The seafood includes crab meat, lobster meat and shrimps perfectly mixed together.

As for the Happy Family, Yang boasts that his version of the dish has more ingredients and more taste than other restaurants’.

For those looking to remain on a diet, China Wok has you covered as well. Diners’ are encouraged to place special orders to cook dishes in particularly healthy ways according to their preference. Every dish at China Wok is prepared with the customer’s health in mind—this means little salt, sugar or oil. The owner has taken an interest in healthy dining trends and has researched the subject thoroughly and hopes in the future to put more of his plans into action.  

What’s a good restaurant without good ingredients? Ingredients are purchased four times a week from a reliable food supplier. Yang checks the kitchen in person everyday to ensure everything is fresh. With such an attention to detail, Yang is quite satisfied with his current business. Everything is ordered in the right amount and they never run out of important ingredients. “Never overstock things. Keep everything as fresh as possible,” he said.

In order to make sure customers can taste what they want every time they come to the restaurant, sauces are prepared by Yang himself everyday to keep the taste consistent. As the restaurant become busier, Yang employs three additional chefs to help shoulder the burden. These chefs are strictly selected by Yang and they are all very experienced. They are required to follow Yang’s instruction to time the cooking processes properly.

In part due to this attention to detail and this love of his craft, Yang’s restaurant has earned the trust of the local population. Customers are more willing to choose China Wok for its reasonable price, extensive choices, excellent food and friendly service.

The timely service is also something that is worth mentioning. A steaming dish is guaranteed to finish within fifteen minutes (for take-out orders) and even quicker for dine-in orders. Yang doesn’t want his customers to wait for too long.

Shared Responsibility Makes the Service Spectacular

The employees in the kitchen, Yang and his wife all are collectively responsible for the cleaning of the restaurant. They bus the tables and clean messes in a timely fashion to keep customers comfortable and the restaurant welcoming. Yang emphasizes cleanliness at all times, ensuring that an employee’s hands don’t directly touch the food when packing or delivering food to customers.

He also believes in the importance of coordination between workers. A difficult task can be made easier if people will work together towards a common goal, Yang explained.

He emphasizes “Good Food, Good Service, Good sanitation.” And making sure nothing is done carelessly or without consideration. He knows the local population and they know him and his restaurant. At lunch, China Wok greets office workers and at dinner, families. In order to maintain their trust, the restaurant has to be diligent.

Yang has established strong friendships with many regular customers, and his daughter always communicates with customers to help strengthen the relationship. Yang tries to remember each customer’s name, preferences and even his/her friends and family.

An Owner of Principle

In 1990, Mr. Yang came to the United States. He spent the first five years working for a western restaurant and then in 1997 opened his first restaurant. Due to his success and experience, in 2006, he opened China Wok. He believes earnestly that this is what he is meant to do and can’t see himself doing anything else but running a restaurant.

Despite the economic climate, Yang insists that prices remain constant because he believes that good restaurants should compete in service and food. “Try to be the best in the field you are doing. Once you make the effort, you will get something back,” Yang said.

He still has hope for the future, of course. “I am waiting for the economic recovery and plan to open more restaurants,” explains the proud owner. He hopes to do further research to discover what other preferences and tastes customers might enjoy so that he may be able to better cater to them.