Wok Zone

On May 26, 2011, I decided to have lunch at the Wok Zone in Winchester at 819 South Braddock Street, near the Handley High School campus. It opened for business on April 14, 2011, and featured a fast food version of an Asian Fusion menu. The restaurant is in a freestanding building set back from the street, and has its own four private parking spaces.

It's a small place, with two rooms. Entry is into the left room, which has three square, compact tables seating four apiece, with rest rooms in the back. The right room has four tables in the front; with the order station and kitchen in the rear.

The food is prepared to order, which is why I called it fast food. A large plate glass window allows you to observe the food preparation, if you're curious. After choosing from the displayed menu, and perhaps taking a canned beverage from a refrigerated case, you pay for your order and take a seat.

The menu lists Appetizers, Soups, Salads, Rice Plates, Noodle Bowls, and Desserts. There's also a limited children's menu called the Kid's Zone. A Party Pack Menu features portions that will serve six or seven adults.

You can view the detailed menu at wokzone.com, if you're interested. My choice was Crispy Honey Chicken from the Rice Plate menu, with brown rice, and oolong tea, one of their hot tea specialties.

Preparing my order didn't take long; that's the advantage of wok cookery. The crispy wok-seared chicken was good, but a magnifying glass was needed to detect the minuscule quantity of advertised scallions and red bell peppers that accompanied it.

My $2.00 serving of tea was a tea bag in a paper cup of hot water. The water was hot enough, and the tea was good, but I thought that for the price I was entitled to a pitcher of hot water and a chinaware teacup.

The seating area was quite crowded, and I was not impressed by the overall ambience of the place. I am not a snob, but I consider that a dining experience includes the environment in which one eats.

It may be that the Wok Zone's primary clientele is the take-out crowd, and the limited space for dine-in accommodations can't be helped. Well, I wanted to know what the place is like. Now I do, but I don't believe I'll be a regular patron.

An ice cream parlor called the Dairy Cream Corner was the previous occupant of this space, but I never got around to trying it out. Before that, it was an audio-visual outfit, and once, upon a long time ago, it was a candle store back when that was an active fad.