Award-winning chef Peter Chang opened a Szechuan-style Chinese restaurant on Route 1 in August.

The restaurant, called Peter Chang Kitchen & Bar, offers authentic Chinese dishes, including customer favorites like Peking duck, chili oil-boiled flounder and scallion pancakes. Kung Pao chicken, Mongolian beef and a variety of fruit teas and smoothies are also on the menu.

“Here we’re serving the best food … more authentic Chinese food to people to help them get to know the Chinese culture,” Rogen Xuzhou, the restaurant’s assistant general manager, said.

Chang owns more than 20 restaurants across the East Coast, including Peter Chang China Grill in Charlottesville and NiHao in Baltimore. The College Park location filled a vacancy left by MeatUP Korean Barbecue.

Xuzhou said Chang visits the restaurant frequently to cook and check in on how the business is doing. The manager also said the restaurant aims to keep prices affordable for students in the area.

Prices for chef’s specialty entrees range from $18 for Northwest-style spicy chicken to $32 for baked spicy Maryland blue catfish. The menu also includes soups, dumplings, noodles and tapas.

“I just graduated [college] this year and I know that if the price is too expensive, me as a college student, I’ll probably not be able to afford it, because we have to pay for a lot of things,” Xuzhou said.

Rasheeda Childress, an editor from Greenbelt, said she was excited to see a Peter Chang restaurant open in College Park. She said she has eaten at the Charlottesville location many times while staying with family.

“We don’t have to wait for Charlottesville. We can just eat in the next town over,” Childress said.

Childress said she placed a takeout order of skewers and flounder but in the past has ordered the scallion pancakes, which she described as delicious. She said this location has a “hip vibe.”

“It seems like it’d be a great place to just pop in really quick. And also they do great takeout,” Childress said.

Fay Fan, a business manager and College Park resident, ordered the pork soup dumplings, stir-fried pork, Hunan sauteed pork belly and spring rolls. She called all of the food “perfect” and said the restaurant has easy parking and reasonable prices.

“They have some authentic Chinese dishes, which I haven’t seen much around here,” Fan said. “The portion is very friendly for one single person … so it’s very economic.”