Daniel Tai and Amy Chiang grew up in their parents’ restaurants — Tai’s in Kansas, Chiang’s in Taiwan.

When the couple started dating, they bonded over their shared culinary childhoods and their love of food. Now they’ve bonded business-wise with their own restaurant.

iEats is a Pan Asian restaurant at 13366 Metcalf Ave., Overland Park. Red Ginger Sushi & Asian had a short stint in the space.

The menu includes dumplings, crispy ham sandwiches, and shrimp hand rolls, along with platters like sweet potato curry chicken or grilled seasoned salmon. Other menu items include teriyaki steak or sautéed jalapeno beef with rice, shrimp Phad Thai, homemade chicken noodles, stir fried beef Udon, and Boba teas. The crispy salmon rolls have been a particular hit with customers, the owners said.

“Our parents cooked traditional Chinese foods. But I have worked in a Japanese restaurant and Daniel and I eat at Thai restaurants all the time,” Chiang said. “We love to take items that we love and then create something new.”

H&M to Oak Park

Oak Park Mall has confirmed that H&M will open a store on the lower level in the Nordstrom wing. The opening is scheduled for early fall. Officials with H&M couldn’t be reached for comment.

H&M has become one of the world’s hottest specialty stores by offering low-priced contemporary clothing. When it opened its first area store at 440 W. 47th St. on the Country Club Plaza in November 2011, lines stretched down the block and around the corner.

H&M has been in an expansion mode, opening more than 300 stores a year for a current total of more than 2,800 locations.

A Zagat favorite

Zagat Survey has selected its 25 “top service restaurants” in the nation - just in time Valentine’s Day, one of the busiest dining out nights of the year.

Prairie Village’s Café Provence, in The Village shopping center at 3936 W. 69th Terrace, made the list, described as adorable, family-owned, and a hidden monument to flavor and hospitality with a crew that “makes you feel at home.”

“It’s what we have worked very hard at for the last 11 years,” said Patrick Quillec, chef and co-owner of Café Provence. “Every day someone from the family is here – me, my brother, my sister-in-law, my wife, my daughter, my son. We know our people, regulars who come in almost every day or weekly.”

In a recent Zagat survey, 64 percent of responders cited service as their No. 1 complaint when dining out (followed by noise at 19 percent, prices at six percent, food at six percent and parking at three percent). Additionally, about 32 percent of survey respondents said they would chop 10 percent off the tip if they received bad service.

Quick bites

•  Longtime area pastor Robert Southard, who retired four years ago, has opened Unique Finds at 7140 W. 80th St. in downtown Overland Park. The shop sells such items as greeting cards made in the Yunnan Province in China, olive wood nativity ornaments from Bethlehem and wall art by Burmese refuges in Thailand.

•  Wal-Mart has purchased property in Olathe’s Brentwood Plaza Shopping Center with plans to open one of its neighborhood grocery stores on the site.

Wal-Mart officials did not return phone calls and no opening date was available for the 41,179-square-foot store at 151st and Brentwood streets.

•  Longtime Oak Park Mall tenant Bakers shoes has closed. The St. Louis-based company has been closing stores since before it filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2012.

In other Oak Park news: European Bistro closed in the food court. It opened two years ago on a short term lease that recently expired, according to the mall management. Le Gourmet Chef closed in late January. Eddie Bauer will relocate in the mall in April. iComfort Sleep System by Serta will open a store in April.

Bloomberg News contributed to this column.

To reach Joyce Smith, call 816-234-4692 or send email to jsmith@kcstar.com. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter at JoyceKC.