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Chang’s House is definitely one of those “Local Secret” kind of places. It’s not in an obvious location, so you have to find it some other way, because you’re probably never going to drive by the place. It’s located on the back side of a strip mall, actually just a little bit down and across the street from Rooster’s Chicken Shack. When you get there, it’s immediately obvious that this place is geared toward takeout. There are only six tables in the place.
Needless to say, you should probably call ahead. They don’t have a website that I can find, but I DID have the presence of mind to grab a to-go menu and take pictures of it for you guys. You’re welcome. The menu mentions lunch specials and says they open at 11am, but they’re currently opening at 3pm for dinner only due to Covid-19. Hopefully that changes soon, because this would be an amazing lunch spot.
Yesterday, we went on a weird mini road trip to buy a massive amount of yarn, it’s a pretty long story. The point of this story is that it was like 4pm and we were all totally starving. We had planned to stop in the small town of Lexington, TN, where we bought the yarn, and find some place there to eat, but we got hit by some seriously torrential rainfall and it just didn’t make sense to try to find a place to eat during a downpour with a toddler during a pandemic.
All of this is to say, we decided to just make it back home as quickly as humanly possible and order some food from Chang’s House when we got home.
We ended up going with a Kung Pao chicken combination, a sweet and sour chicken combination, and an order of cheese wontons. The combinations both came with fried rice and an egg roll.
All the food was excellent. That’s one of the things I love about Chang’s House, they’re very consistent. I’ve never caught them on an “off day”. I don’t think they have them.
The sweet and sour chicken is some of the best I’ve had. I know it’s basically Chinese chicken nuggets, but some times you’ve been in a car all day and you just need a large amount of very fried food, and this totally hit the spot. The Kung Pao chicken is really good too, I should have ordered it a little spicer than it comes by default though, they seem to have tailored it for local tastes and most people are a little shy about spicy Chinese food.
This place has some of the best egg rolls I’ve ever had too. They’re HUGE, impossibly crispy, and stuffed with veggies. They’re legitimately big enough to damn near be a meal on their own.
The cheese wontons are excellent too. To me, they hit the perfect balance of wrapper to filling. A lot of places mess up with ratio in one direction or the other. Some have too little filling and are basically all wrapper, some have too much filling and you don’t get that nice textural contrast from the crispy wrapper. The wontons from Chang’s house nail the ratio perfectly. Just enough cheese and just enough wrapper so that you get crispy, crunchy wrapper and rich creamy cheese in every bit.
Since moving to Bartlett, Chang’s House has quickly become my go-to spot for Chinese. The portions are very generous, the prices are very reasonable, the quality is always high, and they’re insanely consistent. If you know of a better Chinese restaurant in Memphis, by all means, Chang my mind. (There was no way I was getting through this entire article without one Community reference).
