The Shape of Things to Come

Opening a new restaurant in Newton usually takes months and months, what with permits needing to be pulled and significant renovations needing to take place.

opened in under a month in the spot formerly occupied for many years by Peking Cuisine.

“It was already a restaurant, so nothing really needed to be changed,” explains Freddy Chen, the manager and son of husband-and-wife owners Mingchang and Meinfen Chen. “We did a lot of cleaning, put in the hardwood floors and brought the fish tank from home. Everything else was from Peking Cuisine.”

Though the changes to the décor were moderate, the food at Sweet Potato Bistro is very different. True to the Taiwanese style of home cooking, chef/owner Mingchang Chen uses less oil, less MSG and less salt in his dishes.

But the real focus of the menu at Sweet Potato Bistro is their “Taiwanese Tapas.” While tapas are traditional Spanish small plates, Freddy explains their use of the cross-cultural terminology.

“It’s almost like a dim sum, that’s what other Taiwanese restaurants will call it,” Freddy states. “A lot more people know what tapas are, though. It’s different from dim sum, which is Cantonese. They push the carts around and we do it by order, like a tapas restaurant.”

The most popular dishes at Sweet Potato Bistro are the Ba-Wan (semi-transparent dough dumplings stuffed with pork, mushrooms and bamboo shoots and steamed), Steamed Pork Buns, Chicken or Pork Cutlet over Rice, and Pan Fried Turnip Cake.

Homemade sauces enhance these dishes that are meant to “mixed and matched and shared.” The most popular of these is a miso-based, secret recipe sauce Freddy laughingly calls “My Daddy’s sauce” since his father makes it from scratch. Another popular addition is the “killer” hot sauce, added to “everything – we like to eat spicy stuff." The sauces are also available for sale.

On the weekends, Sweet Potato Bistro adds as many as 25 additional tapas items to their menu. The Taiwanese brunch is meant to be lingered over, and Freddy says that diners can spend up to a couple of hours sampling different dishes and “talking, relaxing.”

But the origin of the concept is far more exciting. Based on street food sold in single-item stalls at night markets, these dishes would be consumed in Taiwan throughout the course of an evening out on the town after work.

“It’s like a carnival or street fair, but it happens every night,“ explains Freddy. “You go from stall to stall and eat one thing here and another thing there. There’s also clothing and accessories for sale. Sometimes there’s a free concert and games. It’s really vibrant!”

The name of the restaurant also has its roots in Taiwan.

“The shape of Taiwan actually looks like a sweet potato,” Freddy states. “And sweet potatoes were like a ‘poor person food.’  In Taiwan we (the Taiwanese) were farmers, and we ate sweet potatoes to fill ourselves up when we cooked at home. My dad might put some of these dishes on the menu as specials.”

Freddy went to school at UMass Boston to study criminal justice and his brother Sean, who just opened his own law office, covers managerial duties on Tuesdays so that Freddy can have a day off (though he laughingly acknowledges that he still works behind the scenes then). But it’s clear that Freddy’s true goal is to follow in his father’s footsteps and make sure that Sweet Potato Bistro upholds the family’s high standards.

“I would like to keep it in the family, learn all the special sauces and the cooking methods,” Freddy says with a smile. “As long as we keep a good name for ourselves, which we have now, I want to be here to make sure the customers are satisfied, that everything stays the same and that I’m consistent with the food.”