POULSBO — Taste, Poulsbo’s newest restaurant, stands on a sparsely developed end of Olhava Avenue and presents a humble exterior accented by Chinese architecture.

A look inside the new building, however, provides another impression, with plenty of eye-catching ornamentation establishing an illuminating ambiance.

Taste makes ample use of light as it is refracted through glass chandeliers, columns, and marble stained glass, or reflected across mosaics, including a wall-sized depiction of a golden Seattle skyline.

“You have to come in to see it, then you would know the difference,” owner Yan Zhang said of the difference between the traditional Chinese food experience of Taste, versus her other restaurant in Silverdale, the King’s Wok Buffet.

Taste opened its doors on Nov. 12.

“It’s been pretty good,” Zhang said of customer visits. “People are starting to know that we are open.”

Taste offers two varieties of fare: traditional Chinese food and sushi, straying a bit from the King’s Wok format.

“A lot of people thought it would be a buffet, because we have a buffet in Silverdale,” she said, noting that she wanted to go more traditional with the Poulsbo restaurant.

“The buffet is not really traditional Chinese food. It’s more American Chinese food. Now we are trying to bring in more traditional Chinese food.”

For example, Zhang said, American Chinese food may consist of well-known dishes like broccoli beef that are heavy on fried rice. Taste does offer fried rice, but items like broccoli beef are not on the menu. What is on the menu are items such as oyster dishes, steamed whole fish, braised fish cubes, hot and sour soup, and jellyfish head with cucumbers. There are also some familiar titles for westerners such as Kung Po (or Pao) chicken and sweet and sour pork.

Then there’s the sushi.

“I was very surprised that there wasn’t a sushi restaurant over there, very surprised,” Zhang said.

Aside from grocery store sushi, the sushi restaurants nearest to Poulsbo are in Silverdale and on Bainbridge Island.

Taste also offers a variety of lobster dishes, sourced from the lobster tanks that customers see near the front door.

But to really know what traditional Chinese food is like, Zhang said, one has to sit down and try it.

“If I told you ‘traditional Chinese,’ you wouldn’t know,” she said. “You have to come in and try it out.”