http://www.lawrence.com/users/photos/2012/aug/03/238764/

If you follow my colleague Chad Lawhorn’s Town Talk blog, you know something has been going on with the restaurants at the southeast corner of 10th and Mass. After a month of being closed for remodeling, The Orient, Oh Boy! Chicken and (sort of) Angler’s Seafood House reopened last week — as the same restaurant.

I stopped in Friday to check it out, and Nancy Nguyen, who owns all three restaurants, said the style of the new place is more “like a bistro.” Nguyen she was looking to reduce her overhead and pare down the time she spent running between all three establishments.

“One person, you can’t do it,” she said.

The 3-in-1 conglomeration at 1006 Mass. has signs outside for The Orient and Oh Boy! Chicken. Inside, the decor is mostly Asian with some chickens and a fish here and there. There are two separate menus, one for The Orient (with its “pho-nomenal” pho and other Vietnamese dishes) and one for Oh Boy! Chicken (which offers gluten-free fried chicken, catfish and down-home sides).

Nguyen said the cost of flying in fresh fish three times a week has gotten too high to support. Rather than have it on a daily menu, she said, she expects to serve some of Angler’s specialties, such as lobster tail, as weekend specials.

If any of you have been to that little Mexican-Chinese restaurant in downtown Eudora, Jasmine, it’s kind of like that. If your party can’t decide what its in the mood for, everyone can sit at the same table but dine in different worlds. (Incidentally, that place has both Mexican blankets and Asian things on its walls. It’s really something.)

P.S. Alleged Vermont Street BBQ-to-be, next door at 1004 Mass., still has paper over the windows and “Coming soon!” signs on the door.