If you ignore the pleather booths, music that sounds like filler for the community idea station, white zinfandel and cheap reds with names reminiscent of forgotten forests, ie Thousand Oaks, and a dull sushi menu, then you’ll l find yourself in a very good Chinese place.
But calling MaMa Wok a Chinese place is akin to calling a restaurant serving hotdogs, pancakes, filet mignon, fried cod, pig’s feet souse, and morels an American restaurant, if anyone would ever put all those dishes on the same menu.
America and China are big countries, with wide variances in food and cooking techniques from province to province, state-to-state. A better description, actually, of MaMa Wok, is pan-Asian, a term that needs to be rescued from the plate of wasabi mashed potatoes that stymied it in the first place.
The menu here is as broad as China’s regional specialties, running the gamut from Szechuanese, Hunan, Cantonese, Americanized Chinese, Japanese and a few Thai inspired selections to boot.
The Japanese portion of the menu leaves me with this question: When will someone open a bang-up Japanese place in Richmond? But, the portions of the menu dedicated to "Special Appetizers" and "Ma Ma Wok’s Specials" are delightful.
One dish I can sink my incisors into is the beef tendon in red chili sauce, $5.95, which is only a little spicy but packed with cilantro, scallion and sheets of subtly flavored, highly-textured beef tendon that is served room temperature. Not hot, not cold, but just right. Temperature is massive conduit of flavor for me.
This dish served hot doesn’t work. Ditto that for served cold. I also like the cold jelly fish (must be cold!), with a touch of vinegar, and the beef tripe with hot pepper sauce, $6.95, that is stir-fried dry until toothsome and barely chewy.
If serving children, I suggest the Chinese noodle and rice dishes. Then noodles in the beef chow fun, $8.95, may be a little gummy, but it’s intentional. The wide ribbons capture rafts of sauce like a micro fleece shammy. If dining with timid eaters, then try the "Chef’s Specials", which include predictable take-out Chinese offerings such as General Tso’s Chicken, $10.95, Ma Ma Wok’s "most highly recommended dish", according to my menu. I beg to differ. While smoky, spicy and huge, I’ll still suggest you try the beef tendon before the General.
A couple of mains we enjoy are the crispy whole lobster, $15.99lb, and the black bean whole fish, $11.99lb (usually tilapia, you can see it swimming in a tank with the lobsters before eating it) accompanied by brown or steamed rice. And, should you ever want to worm your way into my heart, here are two ways to do it: Serve me fried seafood or homemade mayonnaise. The salt and pepper triple delight, $14.95, fried scallops, squid and shrimp, may be piled higher than the K2, but they don’t quite do it.
While tasty, there are two places in town that serve better incarnations of this dish, Full Kee or Mekong. Try salt and pepper deep-fried something at either place, but don’t look for homemade mayo. That you’ll have to do for yourself.
MaMa Wok **1/4
7801 W. Broad St.
(804) 672-8989
What’s in the Stars:
0—don’t go
*-average
** above average
*** very good
**** excellent dining experience
Imagine learning to process caviar in Russia after a childhood of Cup-a-Soup. Needless to say, Varmit Pickeral was inspired. Thus began 20 years of restaurant gypsy-hood, beginning with Varmit’s first job as a dishwasher in an institutional kitchen and then trying out most any job Varmit could get in the hospitality industry, including; NC BBQ pit line-cook, cheese steward at Artisanal in Manhattan, grape picker, and specialty buyer for Balducci’s Food Lover’s Market in Northern Virginia.
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