Can the new Chow compete with the elevated food at San Ramon’s City Center Bishop Ranch?

When I moved to the Bay Area more than 15 years ago, Chow, the busy but friendly all-day restaurant in Lafayette’s La Fiesta Square, was a popular spot for brunch, and also offered a mishmash of global comfort food, like steak frites, Thai noodles, deconstructed lasagna and meatloaf. It worked for its time, I suppose, especially when the other option was frog legs at Petar’s. Eventually the restaurant, part of a mini-chain that also had locations in Danville and Oakland, even opened a small market inside, offering essentials long before we knew what that word would come to mean to us.

Alas, none of the Chows made it. All five, including the San Francisco original, shuttered by 2019, which is when Chow LLC filed for voluntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Now, Chow is back, this time in a 6,000-square-foot, glass-encased space that opened in August at San Ramon’s City Center Bishop Ranch. The new Chow is beautiful; it has high ceilings and an indoor-outdoor vibe with tons of greenery. The beverage program is robust, with a dozen-plus cocktails, six local beers on draft and at least 10 wines, a mix of Old and New World, at an affordable $13-and-under a glass.

But it is difficult to know how Chow’s food program fits into the East Bay dining scene in 2022, especially given its immediate surroundings. They may include chains, but the restaurants at Bishop Ranch provide high-quality global food, some at the top of their respective categories, from ramen (Hiroshi Ramen) and Italian (Delarosa) to Vietnamese (Slanted Door), udon (Marugame Udon) sushi (Bamboo Sushi) and Indian cuisine (Curry Up Now). You get the picture.

On a dinner menu featuring a few tacos, a few pastas, popcorn shrimp and beef carpaccio, what stands out? Can’t believe we’re doing this — quoting a Yelper — but in the words of Randy B., “The menu is meh. A little of this and a little of that — aka ‘eclectic.’ In other words, identity crisis.” (He did enjoy the burger).

Perhaps some menu descriptions beyond the one or two words that Chow provides would help. What does “Chicken taco, chipotle” mean? Is that the chile pepper? A rub? A sauce? Our friendly server arrived at our table pen to pad, eager to scrawl our orders and cover his other tables. No time to talk prep or ingredients.

We can certainly recommend our starter, a basket of crispy, still-warm arancini ($10), their insides adequately chewy with tomato-spiked rice and gooey mozzarella. From there, our meal went a bit south. My kid’s chicken tenders didn’t seem to be made from tenders but from thicker chicken breast that was hard in parts, too tough to chew, and it lacked salt or seasoning. Thai Chili Noodles ($21), while flavorful, suffered from lime overload as well as the same dry, tough, overcooked meat issue — chicken and beef.