Chef Chang’s on Back Bay

House made dumplings and Peking Duck are as good as I’ve ever had. No frills location so you’re not going to see anyone getting proposed to here. What you will see is an authentic, family run restaurant that satisfies right down to the last fortune cookie.

Quality, authentic Chinese — pleasantly surprised to find this in Back Bay. Outstanding beef noodle soup. One of the best anywhere — flavorful, just the right amount of heat (don’t let the chili oil scare you), plenty of beef tendon, ample enough to split for two. Loved the sauteed pea tips (seasonal), tender and fresh.
Tucked away on Mass btw Marlborough/​Beacon (conveniently off the #1 Mass/​Beacon stop). Don’t let the unassuming exterior fool you — quite cozy inside! Friendly staff makes you feel right at home. Slightly higher priced than Chinatown, but well-​deserved when considering quality, location, ambiance and service.
Look forward to trying out the scallion pancakes, pan-​fried dumplings and other delights — will be a regular here soon!

I found this place via Unilocal while visiting Boston for the weekend and I was blown away. This is a must for Chinese food if you’re visiting of living in Boston. The outside doesn’t look like much at all and you might question if you’re at the right place. The décor isn’t anything special, but WOW, everything else sure is. The service was outstanding. Our food arrived to our table quickly and HOT. Very fresh. We ordered spring rolls, chicken with broccoli, and chicken lo mein. Everything was the best I’ve ever had. Reasonably priced. Definitely recommend.
Looking back at other reviews, I see that at one time this place seemed to be struggling with service. That is NOT the case anymore. In fact, there were not many servers. Two or three at most. I assume this is because they probably cleaned house on staffing and started new. We also had extremely fast service. Don’t take older reviews into consideration for this place.

Got the chicken lo mein. Ordered on Christmas, decent delivery time, food was really good! Will definitely be ordering from here again!

This place has the scallion pancakes, mapo tofu, and eggplant with garlic sauce that you crave. Hand-​pulled noodles, steamed buns, and lamb with scallions are also still on my mind several weeks later. On a Sunday evening, we were able to get a table immediately and sit for a few hours feasting until we closed the place down and stumbled out, drunk on food. I highly recommend you try this spot if food is more important to you than atmosphere.

Stopped here for lunch one day. The woman running the place greeted me instantly and seemed friendly and accommodating, which gave me a good first impression.
Food:
I ordered the Sichuan Twice Cooked Pork. For the price, I thought the portion size was pretty generous. Overall the pork was cooked well but some of the pieces had too much fat for my liking. The sauce tasted pretty good but was slightly on the greasy side. I also ordered a passion fruit bubble tea but it was much sweeter than I was expecting.
Service:
The cook-​time for the pork was pretty standard, about 20 minutes. The tea, however, was a completely different story. After I’d already waited for 30 minutes (the server, who happened to be the same woman running the place) told me that it was coming very soon. I would have felt bad cancelling the order so I decided to eat slower so that I didn’t finish my meal before it arrived. Despite slowing down, after another 30 minutes, I had already finished my meal and paid the check, but was still waiting on the tea. It finally arrived after over an hour’s wait, and the excuse I received was that they had run out of fresh boba and had to make more. As disappointing as the hour-​plus wait time was, what bothers me more is that I wasn’t told this upfront and was instead told several times throughout the meal that it was coming soon (presumably because they didn’t want me to cancel my order).
Personally, I think every place can have a rough day with lapses in service so I try not to be unfairly harsh when this happens but I thought the manager was disingenuous in updating me with the status of my order.

Yummy food and ample portions. Cozy little restaurant.
I got the vegetable pan-​seared noodles. It had vegetables that you don’t always see in Chinese restaurants, including bok choy and pea pods. A little too much sauce for my preferences, but it tasted great.
They were more than accommodating of our large group.

Food: some meat are not fresh. Taste is below average.
Price: overcharged for the food and service quality.
Service: the waiters seems not get along and have minimal communication with each other.
I really would like to give this place a zero rating but the stupid Unilocal doesn’t give me such option. Try it on your own risk.

We are in Boston visiting from houston staying very close to this restaurant. With the baby in bed we decided to get take out from here because it was close and easy. We ordered the spring rolls, beef and brocoli and Sichuan pork with Chinese pancakes and fried pork rice. Oh my gosh.
This is the best Chinese we have ever had. The good was ready for pick up on time and when we got it home and dived into it the food was just absolutely delicious. The pork rice was great and not greasy like some fried rice be. The beef and brocoli as amazing. Brocoli was cooked perfectly flavor spot on. The Sichuan pork with Chinese pancakes was fantastic and not overly hot. The spring rolls were hands down the best I’ve ever had.
I’d xome back to Boston to have some more of this.

The staff at Chef Chang’s is super friendly. They pretty much treat you like family. My cell phone was dying and our waitress that I can see myself affectionately calling «a yi» (aunt) pulled a charger out of her purse for me and insisted we stay and sit longer after our meal so that I could charge my phone for longer.
For dinner my boyfriend and I ordered crab rangoon (completely not authentic, but my childhood as the daughter of a chef who had to cater to a completely white community in bumblefck middle of no where Michigan consisted of a lot of crab rangoon and my boyfriend had never tried it so I figured why not?), beef noodle soup, and zhajiangmian.
The crab rangoon was delicious in all its Americanized glory. The wonton skin was crisp and deep fried and the imitation crab/​cream cheese filling was sweet but not overpowering.
My beef noodle soup was great but wow, I did not expect it to be spicy! Must have missed that call out on the menu, as I’m terrible with spicy foods and actually kept coughing while drinking the delicious broth. I didn’t mind though – I would order it again and probably still get it spicy. This ain’t Taiwanese beef noodle soup, but it’s pretty damn good.
My boyfriend didn’t love the zhajiangmian, as it was not authentic and he expected it to be (unlike the crab rangoon which we obviously did not expect to be authentic). There was way way way too much sauce. It almost looked like soup when it came out, and zhajiangmian should be a fairly dry dish.
Despite all that, the quality of food at Chef Chang’s is much better than Chinatown and we would definitely visit again despite it being further away from where we live.

Food is below average for the price. Service honestly sucks. I was the only one there at the time. But it took them half an hour to take my order. Then I waited for almost another half an hour for my first dish, and waited more than half an hour for my second and third dishes. When I signed the receipt, the waitress asked me to write the total amount. So I wrote the total amount, the waitress asked me to write the amount including tips. They should be glad that I walked out without asking for discounts for waiting for 2 hours.

I have tried so many Chinese food restaurants in NYC, first time tried chef Chung surprises me. That you can’t imagine such a small Chinese restaurant carrying authentic Chinese food. I was not expect that high. But I like their new tasting menu. The seafoods here are awesome. I deduct one star because the restaurant is very small and they had limited tables. You have to wait if you come during mealtime.

Very authentic Chinese food. I am from China and I have stayed in several cities in US, but this is the best and authentic Sichuan food I ever had. The lady is very welcoming to us as well. I heard the chef is from Sandong. I will come back and try other dishes some day.

I had the best beef noodle soup I’ve had in Boston (possibly anywhere) here. The soup was flavorful and not too greasy. The meat was tender. The bok choy was still crisp and not overcooked. YES. While I usually prefer to go to Chinatown to get my Chinese food fix, I will come here just for this dish.
Very English friendly. It was a little strange to be eating Chinese food in a restaurant with white tablecloths, haha.
Prices are definitely a little higher than Chinatown but hey, it’s Back Bay and you’re paying for the location. And it’s a nice change to eat Chinese food at a fancy-​looking place.

Really authentic Chinese food, the best in the neighborhood! And very nice stuff, great service!
Highly recommend!!!

This place is the bomb, and i’m a little disappointed not to see more favorable reviews. Out of all the good Chinese food I’ve had in Boston, this is easily one of my favorite restaurants.
I previously lived in china for a little over a year (cumulatively not consecutively), and Sichuan food is one of my favorites. Chef Chang’s does it about as well as you can expect given that you’re not actually in China. Although i’ll admit that some dishes are better than others (the eggplant is a bit too sweet for my taste), I’ve eaten here and ordered in to work from Chef Chang’s on a number of different occasions, and generally been very impressed.
I would definitely recommend the the hong shao rou (fatty roast pork), the da pan ji (big plate of chicken – a Uyghur speciality which is really hard to find in America), the cold spicy noodles, the fuqi fei pian (beef tendon with chili), and the dry fried chicken with peppers. Sichuan food, and chongqing style cooking in particular, is famous for the mala flavor which is produced by a combination of hot chili and chili peppercorn which has a numbing, cooling sensation. all of the dishes i just listed are pretty spicy, but absolutely delicious if you can handle a little heat.
Overall, I would say that they don’t excel at the standard american Chinese fare, but if you’re looking for an authentic experience, you will not be disappointed.

This is really authentic flavor! I loved especially the eggplant dragon, just the same as my home town!

The Bashu Chicken was way too greasy and mostly dough. Too spicy and not good at all. Very disappointing since its a «suggestion from the chef». The fried rice was good but hard to screw up.
The attention is ok although there is just one person serving.
The buns are also very greasy.

I came here with my girlfriend because she lived a block away from this place and we heard the chef is famous so we are hoping for some authentic Chinese cuisines.
I was excited to find the two items on the menu which came from my home town — Xian, China.
The two items we ordered were:
陕西肉夹馍 — SHANXI Chinese Hamburger
These ended up very small with soft bread being the buns, the actual bread is suppose to be toasted with hard shell like this:
Not like how they made it, not authentic
The other item:
麻辣米线 — MA – LA Rice Noodles
This was my childhood favorite and I used to eat it every couple of days, and I can tell you its not authentic either. For one, the noodles are suppose to be a thick form of vermicelli, which is what the ‘米线’ is supposed to be, not the noodles they used.
The soup is also very off and but the flavor it claims to be (麻辣 — spicy and numbing) FYI, this is what the real thing looks like:
This place also had a confusing décor that seems to be a cross between European and Chinese, it almost seems like they were too lazy to redo the wallpaper left behind by the Wine Cellar (previous tenant). So while this place was a disappointment for someone looking for the real authentic dishes from my childhood, at least its not blatantly fake Chinese food like Panda Express and is still worth a try.

Best Chinese Restaurant in the Back Bay.
Really excellent food, not your traditional American-​Chinese food, dish seem authentic. The Bashu Chicken was spicy, flavourful, and not at all greasy. We also had fish dish it was prepared in White Wine with Bok Choy and noodle (I forget the name) and this was really good with gentle subtle flavours.
They’re also open to 1am!