Saratoga News

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Eric Diec says his Mandarin Chef features modern Chinese cuisine with a touch of California--including this plate of honey-roasted walnut prawns.

Mandarin Chef serves modern Chinese food

By Suzanne Cristallo

While the name Mandarin Chef suggests that the Saratoga restaurant might serve food of a polished and ornate complexity, it does not hint at the creative fun going on in the kitchen. "We serve mostly a modern Chinese cuisine with a touch of California," says owner Eric Diec. "This is not a traditional Chinese restaurant."

What Diec defines as modern is a multifarious menu with such items as "lovers' prawns"--two kinds of prawns, one hot-braised, the other sautéed in white wine--or "three fairy tales," shrimp, chicken and beef in a spicy sauce. It includes fresh banana-orange chicken, honey-roasted walnut prawns and mint chicken with a lettuce wrap.

A la carte entrées run from $8.75 to $14.95. A family dinner, including appetizer, main course, rice and soup or salad, goes for $13.95 to $20.95, with the more expensive meal including dessert.

"I travel all over the area, and even to Hong Kong, to get ideas," says Diec, 36, who manages the restaurant and has shared ownership of it since it opened in 1991 with his "silent partner," Spencer Chao. He says he eats in all kinds of restaurants to see what other chefs are doing, then creates his own menu for his chef to carry out.

Born in Hong Kong, Diec and his family moved to Ohio in 1975, when he was 15. Soon the lure of the electronics industry in Silicon Valley brought the whole family to San Jose, where Diec's parents and his three brothers and four sisters all entered the field. But Diec had different ideas. He helped pay his way through San Jose State University by working in restaurants. Armed with a bachelor's degree in business management, he started managing a San Jose restaurant right after graduation.

"I was most impressed with the opportunity here," he recalls of his first years in the United States. "I always wanted to work with people, and the restaurant business allowed this."

In 1988, he bought a San Jose restaurant which he ran until 1990. Then an ad for a Saratoga restaurant caught his eye. "I drove by it and bought it immediately."

For the first five years of Madarin's operation, Diec worked up to 14 hours a day, seven days a week. Then a brief trip to Hawaii brought him into a restaurant where he met Tina, who was working there. A year ago, they were married. Tina Diec wants no part of the restaurant business. Instead, she, like all of Diec's family and his partner, entered the electronics field.

"Now, because I am a family man," Diec says with a smile, "I am closed on Mondays and only work about 10 hours a day the rest of the week. It's not bad at all. Now we can be relaxed," he says of his shorter week, made possible by the steady stream of regular patrons who fill his tables--tables, by the way, which each hold a fresh bouquet of flowers purchased every Friday at the Flower Mart and arranged by Diec, who has turned a love of flowers into art.

Mandarin Chef, 14572 Big Basin Way, Saratoga. Open for lunch Tue.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.- 2:30 p.m. Dinner Tue.-Thu., 4:30-9:30 p.m. Open Fri. and Sat., noon- 10 p.m., Sun. noon-9 p.m. 867-4388.

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