It’s kind of an uphill battle for Wok Eat. It’s located across the street from a similar restaurant (the slightly cheaper Boulder favorite Zoe Ma Ma), and has a touch of the sterile look of a generic chain, despite it being the eatery’s only location.
But those who venture in may find it has plenty of its own merits to stand upon.
Like its cross-street nemesis, Wok Eat’s menu focuses on Asian street food. But Wok Eat takes a more pan- Asian street food approach, with dishes representing traditional dishes of China, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan and Bhutan, and all its meals being served in classic Chinese takeout boxes.
There are nine box choices made up of various woksauteed ingredients, as well as the option to build your own. Potstickers and spring rolls are available on the side.
The Fire Dragon ($7.99) from the Chinese selections is one of Wok Eat’s most popular dishes, combining fried chicken, noodles, broccoli, mushrooms and green onion with a spicy szechuan sauce. And it doesn’t skimp on the spice. Midway through a box, my dining companion remarked that my forehead was “as shiny as a Twlight vampire in the sunlight.” But it’s a good straight-forward spice, not a burning-pain-that-onemust-endure-to-prove-they-are-a-manto-some-random-stranger-they-justmet-in-a-bar sort of spice.
Unlike so much in the world of fastcasual Chinese, it wasn’t overly sugary, and rocked chicken that actually tasted like chicken, not something else that could be alleged to taste like chicken.
The Mountain Climber, a Bhutanese homage that will also run you $7.99, combined chicken and egg, red jasmine rice, mushroom and onion with a green curry sauce. It had a thick, earthy flavor from the red rice, one well complemented by the green curry.
My dining companion went the build-your-own box route ($7.99), a move that let her to pick and choose what would comply with her current diet project, which involves cutting out carbs, sugar and fun throughout the week and then embarking on doughnut-obssessed thrillrides on Saturdays.
That route allows customers to pick their choice of noodles or rice, protein, and then add in their choice of three of the 10 available veggies and one of the seven sauces.
Wok Eat’s website says it attempts to source ingredients from Colorado growers whenever possible, though it doesn’t offer any information beyond that.
Chinese food has gotten a bit of a bad rap here in the states, something due largely to its mallfood-courtification (a process that primarily involves adding sugar and aging the food for several hours in a steam table). But Wok Eat is the kind of place that manages to combine the simple menu and fast prep times that people now desire, while ditching the steam table to keep things fresh and flavorful. It may be an uphill battle, but it’s a hill worth battling one’s way up.
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