Though one longstanding Chinese restaurant recently closed, another has opened in the Tysons area.
Chef Tan launched its soft opening at Danor Plaza in Vienna Thursday night (July 31), serving up Hunan-style cuisine in the former Zenola suite at 132 Branch Road SE.
For its soft opening, the restaurant is limiting dine-in hours to dinner from 5-9:30 p.m., spokesperson Albert Yang told FFXnow. During the first weekend at least, the steady stream of patrons — nearly all of them Chinese — required a waitlist for tables.
Future hours for lunch and a grand opening date haven’t been determined yet, Yang says.
“We will need time to train our employees and find better raw food supply,” he said by email. “Currently it is not very stable.”
While food prices in the U.S. are expected to climb in the coming months as a result of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, Yang says Chef Tan’s current supply challenges are unrelated.
“Since we are new to this area, our fresh food, vegetables, dry food, and fresh meat providers need more time to collaborate,” Yang told FFXnow. “Some of the local raw food is new or does not meet our Chef’s requirements, so we need to figure it out.”
As previously reported, the Vienna restaurant is Chef Tan’s first location in Virginia. The chain was started over a decade ago in Fords, New Jersey, by founder Kevin Tan, who was born and raised in China’s Hunan province and wanted to continue his family’s four-decade-long culinary legacy when he immigrated to the U.S.
Though the original location later closed, Chef Tan expanded over the years to eight restaurants in New Jersey, Boston, Delaware and New York City.
The Vienna location is still in the process of building an official website, Yang says, but the initial menu (which can be seen via the link) features an assortment of mostly Hunan-style dishes, from sauteed sliced lamb to stinky tofu, as well as “American-style” Chinese food, like lo mein and General Tso’s chicken.
Chef Tan’s specialties include fresh fish with pickled vegetables, spicy and sour ribeye pot in pumpkin sauce, and spare ribs with spicy cumin seasoning, among others. Some items, such as the Peking duck and a Hunan-style sauteed frog, aren’t yet available.
Situated next to Norm’s Beer and Wine, Chef Tan joins a number of dining options at Danor Plaza, including Sweet Ginger, Big Buns Damn Good Burgers, Pazzo Pomodoro, Chi Mc Korean Fried Chicken and Aditi Gourmet, an Indian restaurant.
