Wild Ginger
8108 Mesa Ste. C-100, 343-8400
Monday-Saturday, 11am-2:30pm, 5-9:30pm;
Closed Sunday
Wild Ginger is the reincarnation of Formosa, the latter of which once sat at the corner of Windsor and Exposition and was one of our favorite Chinese restaurants in town. The circulating story of Formosa’s demise was that the vegetarian-activist owner of Tarrytown Center refused to renew the restaurant’s lease because it served meat (see “Food-o-File,” May 18, 2001, austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2001-05-18/food_foodofile.html ). But serendipity raises its punkin’ little head once more, and we end up with a much more spacious version of the same place we were so fond of.
Wild Ginger, née Formosa, has relocated to the northwest corner of Mesa and Spicewood Springs Road in a spot that easily affords them twice the dining space, more parking, a bigger kitchen, and a much more comfortable and elegant atmosphere. No longer are the diners crammed in next to the society ladies of Tarrytown. You might lose that intimate access to the juiciest gossip and dirt, but you’re much more comfortable while eating. Light jazz and mellow mood music replaces the din of the chattering doyens and table-hoppers. At lunch the large windows let in more light, creating an open and airy feel, further enhancing the new roominess.
The menu remains basically unchanged, retaining an uncommon style that enables the diner to choose a type of meat — or combinations of meats — that they want paired with sauce and vegetables. The name of the dish is given, the vegetables to be included listed, and the sauce described; all that the diner has to do is decide which meat gets paired with the chosen dish. Most of the menu entrées, except for the house specialties ($10.50 to $13.95), are the same price: $8.55, or $9.95 with egg roll and soup. The lunch menu is similarly arranged, except that everything is $5.95, with soup included (with an extra 70 cents for an egg roll). At dinner or lunch, the diner finds almost infinite options, and the portions are definitely large enough to feel like you are getting value for the cost.
We’ve eaten at Wild Ginger many times and have always been pleased, except on one occasion. It was an early, uncrowded Saturday evening, and the sauces were uncharacteristically without body and substance, the meats slightly overcooked and a little tough, and the vegetables in every dish that we ordered were oddly dominated by cucumber and baby corn. It was a less-than-stellar performance on the part of the kitchen.
This presents a problem that plagues restaurant reviewers especially, but diners as well. When you eat out and have a mediocre or bad experience, is it a freak occurrence or par for the course? This can be a prohibitively vexing situation if it’s your first visit to a restaurant. For this reason, reviewers are required to test a restaurant on several occasions, hopefully on different days of the week and times of the day to accurately assess the quality and flavor of the food and the efficiency of the operation. A diner might be just as likely to simply never return to that uninspiring spot, while the reviewer is obligated to the readers and the proprietors of the restaurant to give them a fair representation. Rather than brand Wild Ginger quirky, uneven, and enigmatic for their singular misstep, we have chosen to declare that the solitary bad experience was a mysterious anomaly, and thankfully every meal since has been top-notch.
Chef Robert Chang has a master’s touch with the wok, producing meats that are remarkably tender, flavorful, and just-cooked, while the vegetables retain their crispness and individuality. Sauces are never cloyingly thick and viscous like so many that diners encounter. Instead, they are complex and multidimensionally layered, and always of the proper consistency. Even the most pedestrian item, such as their hot and sour soup, is perfectly presented: a rich, tangy, and spicy broth with delicate threads of egg floating among the minced pork (pork which is so often missing from most other versions around). It’s easily the best in town, and we have been known to make a meal of a large bowl ($5).
The ultimate test of a Chinese kitchen’s pluck, in our opinion, is their ability to conjure up a masterful bowl of Ma Po Dofu (Szechuan hot and spicy bean curd with pork). It’s a deceptively simple dish at first glance, yet one with which the majority of Chinese restaurants fail miserably. Although it’s not even on Wild Ginger’s menu, on our most recent visit there I requested that I be served the dish. The accompanying platter was another relatively simple dish, Mongolian Beef (both at lunch, $5.95).
The bean curd exhibited a depth of richness and spiciness, with just a hint of subtle tang from rice vinegar on the finish. These are all required qualities when paired with a bland ingredient like tofu. Chang’s extemporaneous version is superb. The beef dish was just as toothsome. Caramelized sweet onion, scallion, and smoky dried chiles are paired with meltingly tender beef slices in a slightly sweet and robust sauce. It’s simple and amazingly complex at the same time, which is a true test of ethnic cuisine.
Wild Ginger has a fairly complete selection of appetizers on their menu, our favorites being the pan-fried dumplings ($5 for eight). These minced-pork- and cabbage-filled dough-delights are perfectly cooked: the bottoms singed and golden brown while the tops are steamed to translucence. They come served with a sauce base of rice vinegar and ginger shreds, enabling the diner to customize the taste with soy, sugar, and chile oil. On the vegetable section of the menu are the steamed vegetable dumplings ($5 for eight). Framed in a light pastry casing, these vegetable-stuffed treats arrive on a bed of onion “ring” slivers. They make for an attractive and delicious starter.
Pork with hot garlic sauce ($8.55) arrives steaming with a mound of tender, succulent pork slices swimming in a dark brown garlic sauce with cloud ears, water chestnuts, and scallions. I had requested spicier than normal and certainly got it. Their garlic sauce is so good that we can seldom keep from getting it on everything. The basil chicken ($8.55) is another standby at Wild Ginger that’s hard to pass up. The chicken pieces are large enough to retain juiciness, yet they are nicely browned from contact with a very hot wok. The sauce is a mellow blend of fresh basil leaves and shredded ginger in a light sauce. It’s a nice marriage that’s perfect with the chicken, but we’ve had it with shrimp, too.
A favorite with our group is the Shrimp and Chicken With Fruits in Tangy Brown Sauce ($8.55). Picture a mélange of tender and moist chicken and just-cooked shrimp with pineapple, apple, onion, bell pepper, and carrot tossed with a slightly spicy sauce that’s both mildly sour and sweet from the sugar in the fruits. It’s sweet and sour sauce done right, not the gloppy fluorescent orange stuff you find everywhere else. We have always been fans of a properly done mixed-meat spicy moo-sho, and this is the place to enjoy it. The pancakes encase a mixture of all the meats, and they all have individual flavors, as they should. Too often when you get a meat-mixture dish it all tastes homogenous by the time it makes it to the table. At Wild Ginger, you can taste each morsel, sumptuously bathed in spicy plum sauce and caramelized scallion.
There are also the little things to consider. How annoying it is to get a glass of watered-down tea, or worse, a glass of tea that is all ice cubes and no liquid. We are pleased to announce that Wild Ginger brings a strongly brewed, full-flavored tea with a nice proportion of tea to cubes, and they frequently come by to refill with more chilled tea (instead of an avalanche of cubes and little liquid). Service there has always been right on top of things when we have visited, and the staff has been very accommodating with our aggravating habit of special ordering items.
Formosa has successfully morphed into Wild Ginger with Robert Chang in control of the wok. The result is that Austin now has a larger and more comfortable version of an old favorite, even if it is a touch farther north for us South Austinites. We have to admit that the staff gave us a scare during that Saturday evening aberration, but everything before and since has been delightful, and we will continue to gravitate toward Wild Ginger. 
This article appears in July 26 • 2002.
