Seattle has played out all iterations of modern Vietnamese and modern Japanese, so eventually someone had to try modern Taiwanese, and the young, hip, well-to-do Chinese of the Eastside are the perfect audience for a menu that ranges from crispy fried chicken to century egg over cold tofu to more fusiony dishes like sweet dumplings made with sweet-potato flour. There are quite a few good dishes here, our favorites being lamb with water spinach, pork “burgers” (in steamed buns), and fried pork chop on rice. (Soups are watery and a little bland, though you might get a reasonable bowl of beef noodle.)

Although some dishes come to the table in the expected pile of vegetables and meat atop a pool of oily broth, Facing East does like to play with presentation a bit: the pork “burgers” here actually resemble burgers, the pork spilling out of open-face steamed buns. Shaved ice desserts come out, somewhat annoyingly, on a flat plate as a pile of chunky detritus that resembles a high school science fair volcano.

The space is definitely more upscale than a typical fast-food Chinese joint—the tea service, for example, is lovely, with mod clear plastic cups and teapot—but it’s still in a strip mall, and horribly crowded, so it’s not a particularly pleasant place to dine.