The long-awaited new Peter Chang restaurant coming to Rockville Town Square will open Monday, according to The Washington Post.
The acclaimed Chinese chef, who is expanding his mini empire of restaurants, also plans to be a fixture at the new Rockville location because he lives with his wife in an apartment at the Rockville development, according to the newspaper. The restaurant's name will also be Peter Chang.
Bethesda Beat previously reported the chef had pushed back the restaurant’s opening to mid-April due to permitting problems after originally planning to open in January.
The Rockville location will be Chang’s seventh restaurant. The other six are all located in Virginia, including a new Arlington spot, which opened in March. The Rockville restaurant will have a similar menu to the Arlington location, according to the Post—including items such as beef brisket in a hot pot, boneless whole fish with pine nuts and “Grandma’s sweet and sour pork.”
Chang, a former chef at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., gained fame for being an elusive figure at small Chinese restaurants in the Virginia suburbs during the late 2000s. He later explained in a lengthy profile published in the Post in March that he had run away from the embassy in June 2003 and shied away from publicity because he was afraid Chinese authorities would catch up to him and attempt to detain him for violating an agreement to return to China. Years later he was granted the right to work in the U.S. by an immigration judge in Arlington, who noted that his “restaurants generate a lot of tax revenue,” according to the newspaper report.
The new Rockville restaurant will open at the former 3,100 square foot Taste of Saigon space.
