Joe Kline / The Bulletin A combination platter with fried shrimp and sweet and sour pork at Yis Wok in Redmond.

The first thing that I notice when I walk into Yi’s Wok, one of the newest entries on the ever-changing roster of Chinese-American restaurants in Redmond, is that there’s nothing to notice.

There are no Confucian images on the walls, no Buddhist icons on altars, no artwork featuring snow cranes or grotesquely shaped mountains. No singsong Chinese opera music nor lilting contemporary tunes invade the atmosphere. If it’s ambiance you want, you’ll have to find it in floral-print wallpaper and passing traffic on southbound Sixth Street.

Perhaps the point is to allow diners to focus attention on their food. Yi’s, after all, serves a wide variety of Chinese regional cuisines, from spicy Szechuan to mild Cantonese, hearty Mongolian and Beijing-style dishes to Shanghai and Hunan variations.

Yi’s food is fine, but there’s frankly nothing, pro or con, to distinguish it from so many other restaurants of its ilk in Central Oregon.

Only the very friendly reception I received from new owner Lan Yu and her family — who moved from McMinnville and bought the restaurant (once known as Chan’s) from Fun Yi Chan in early June — made either of my meals here exceptional. Lan’s husband and father both handle cooking chores, she said, while her mother assists up front and helps to raise her two young children. That in itself earns extra points from me.

But when I asked about changing the name of the restaurant from “Yi’s” to “Yu’s,” Lan said it was unlikely they would do so.

Mixed fare

My deluxe lunch was a bargain at $8.50; certainly, I had enough food left over for a full second meal the following day.

I started with a cup of hot-and-sour soup, thicker and spicier than I have had at many other Chinese restaurants. Minced pork and tofu were blended with a variety of vegetables, including crunchy celery and water chestnuts, and boosted with red chili flakes.

The main course, presented (of course) with steamed white rice, included four different meats — bay shrimp, chicken, tender beef and sliced barbecued pork — stir-fried in a mild black-bean sauce with pea pods, zucchini, carrots, broccoli, cabbage and celery. It’s also available with garlic, curry or Szechuan sauces instead of black-bean sauce.

A subsequent dinnertime take-out order started with crab cream-cheese wontons ($7.25), known in some restaurants as crab Rangoon. In this case, I found the deep-fried wonton wrappers were of a size that overwhelmed the small amount of filling within.

An order of Peking shrimp ($11.95) was forgettable. Shelled shrimp, sauteed in a sweet-and-sour tomato sauce with chili paste, were served on a bed of steamed broccoli. But there was no complexity of flavor, and I quickly tired of simply plucking shrimp from tomato sauce.

Hunan chicken ($10.95), stir-fried in a sweet-and-spicy plum sauce, featured a variety of vegetables and more varied flavors. It was especially good with the house low mein ($11.95), wheat noodles sauteed with shredded vegetables and meats.

New Chan’s

With Chan’s having become Yi’s Wok last year, and the earlier Chans having moved to Bend (where they assumed ownership of the original Bend Chan’s), I was puzzled by the added confusion of discovering New Chan’s of Redmond a mile south of Yi’s, at Sixth Street and Glacier Avenue.

The young man at the front desk politely answered my questions: Are you related to the Chans of Bend? No. Are you related to the previous owner of Yi’s Wok? No.

But the menus are nearly identical. Lunch prices are the same, right down to the deluxe $8.50 selection. Crab wontons are 70 cents more ($7.95) at New Chan’s, and Beijing (not Peking) shrimp is an extra dollar at $12.95; but Hunan chicken and house low mein are the same price. And if the same person didn’t write the descriptions in both menus, there was definitely plagiarism involved.

New Chan’s does, however, have some of the colorful traditional decor that Yi’s Wok lacks. The next time I head to Redmond seeking Chinese food, I’ll stop in to see if their food is worthy of the additional attention.

— John Gottberg Anderson can be reached at janderson@bendbulletin.com.