Richardson's Case Against Dallas Steakhouse Spectacle
The roast case is the menu at First Chinese BBQ on South Greenville Avenue in Richardson. Ducks and barbecue pork hang in the window, rice plates move over the counter, and the whole operation runs as daily production rather than occasion dining. This is Cantonese barbecue the way the corridor's communities actually buy it: by the plate at lunch, by the pound on the way home.
The orders that matter come straight off the case. Roasted duck is the headline and the plate the record defends hardest, named for its juiciness by people who track duck across the metro. BBQ pork over rice is the corridor's value benchmark, a full plate of char siu and rice at a price that resets expectations. Soy sauce chicken rounds out the case's canon, and the house crispy noodle shows the wok side of the kitchen keeping pace with the roasting.
The record follows one arc, over and over. It opens with doubt about the plain storefront and the aging strip around it, then reverses completely over the duck. That arc is the format. A roast house judged on its dining room will always read lower than its case deserves, and the storefront has never once been the point. Eleven to eight-thirty, every day of the week, no day off and no evening ambitions.
Richardson's corridor holds the metro's strongest concentration of rooms like this, and First Chinese BBQ is the strip-mall depth argument compressed into one storefront: minimal room, maximal case, a community ordering in volume. The metro's occasion diners find it eventually, usually chasing duck. The corridor never had to find it. It was there first.
