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Business & Tech

Bites Nearby: South Pacific

This Tolland restaurant has a spacious dining room, reasonable prices, and a traditional Chinese menu -- including Chinese beer.

Looking for a quiet place to enjoy an order of spicy Kung Po chicken and a Chinese beer?

South Pacific in Tolland has got you covered.

This comfortable family restaurant is one of the few sit-down places in town and, despite the geography of its name, offers a large menu of traditional Chinese items.

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Chef Teddy Tang knew little of Tolland before he and his partner, manager Ping Lau, opened the restaurant in the Fieldstone Commons shopping plaza in 2007. But since then they have discovered that the local people are welcoming, generous, “friendly, and very nice,” Tang said.

He wishes there were more of them to feed.

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Tang was born in China but has lived in West Hartford for more than 30 years. The son of a restaurant owner, Tang owned and operated the China Wok restaurant at the Hartford Civic Center for many years, but was forced out in 2000 when the facility underwent a major renovation and redevelopment. He took a job cooking at Hartford Hospital, he said, then cooked for a while at Chinese restaurant in Farmington while looking for an opportunity to again go into business for himself.

He was looking for restaurant space around Bishops Corner in West Hartford when a property owner there told him of the Tolland’s Fieldstone Commons project, Tang said. When he saw all the cars parked at the Big Y supermarket anchoring the plaza, he thought it was a business location that had promise. There are not many other Chinese restaurants around, and fewer still with dining rooms.

South Pacific is tucked into the southwestern corner of the plaza and has room for 100 guests in its bright and spacious dining room. It was among the first businesses to open in the plaza and has developed a regular following of both eat-in and take-out customers. Generating an eat-in clientele at lunchtime has been the biggest challenge, Lau said, owing to Tolland’s relatively sparse population and a limited number of work places in the neighborhood around Exit 68 of Interstate 84.

The menu ranges from familiar Chinese appetizers and main dishes such as steamed dumplings (eight for $4.95), wonton soup ($2.20 a pint), and lo mein to more elaborate items like the Peking duck – an entire duck prepared with pancakes, scallions and hoisin sauce ($27).

The ever-present and popular General Tso is available in a chicken variety, or shrimp, or sea scallops or all three in what South Pacific calls General Tso’s Triple Crown ($14.95 as a dinner item). Vegetarians can also order General Tso’s bean curd.

South Pacific serves lunch daily from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. with scaled back portions and prices ranging from $5.95 for chicken with broccoli to $6.95 for similarly prepared jumbo shrimp. Dinner combination specials for $9.95 – more than a dozen pork, chicken, beef or shrimp items – include an egg roll and vegetable fried rice. They are served all day.

South Pacific has a full liquor license and, in addition to cocktails and wine, serves Tsingtao beer, the most popular Chinese beer in the United States. (The brewery was founded in 1903 by German settlers in Qingdao, China.)

South Pacific, 860-875-8889, is open Sundays from noon to 9:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., and Fridays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.

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