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Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Garden Cafe in Alhambra

When my cousin from Denmark and her friend came to visit last month, we found out that they were not very used to eating a lot of things that SoCal Asians are used to eating. So one night for dinner, we decided to take them to the Sunday Cafe on Atlantic Blvd. in Alhambra only to find it closed. Hurriedly, we then drove over to the Garden Cafe instead because we knew at least there would be some foods they would be able to eat. It was a rainy night and the place was emptier than I remember on other visits.

Dinner started out with some creamy soup, which we requested since our visiting Danes don't like tomatoes. Tasted fine except it seems the salt was not incorporated into the soup properly. The creaminess was excellent, though.

The avocado milkshake was good and smooth. Can't really mess that up. Baby R sucked this up.

The rice porridge with fish and chicken was smooth and very good, but they could have cut up the chicken into smaller pieces.

My brother told me that his green tea with boba was very delicious. Cream and sugar were provided.

The seafood chow fun was bland and was pretty greasy.

The sizzling seafood udon was again greasy and bland, and the noodles a little doughy tasting.

The Baked Sole Fillet in Spinach Sauce was nice and creamy, except the sauce wasn't really a sauce. It was more like a bed of chopped spinach added to the bottom of the dish.

The meat dishes really surprised me. The deep fried spicy pork was delicious, a tad salty but perfectly tasty and fried. It wasn't really spicy at all though, since the kids could even eat them.

The combination grilled meat plate was also very good. The chicken, pork, and beef were very tender, and although the lamb was just a tad tough, all the meats were delicious.

We also had a curry dish that was kind of strange. It had a thick consistency to it, and I felt as if the whole dish didn't meld together. And it needed some lemon or spice or something to add some life to it.

I think Garden Cafe had its hit and misses. But as I've said before, I normally don't come to these Hong Kong style cafes like this one or Boston Kitchen or Maxim Cafe for the food. It's more to socialize or simply because it's open late.

Garden Cafe is located at 228 W. Valley Boulevard, Alhambra, CA (626) 289-1833

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's nothing worse than greasy chow fun. Ugh. And I LOVE chow fun.

PaTan said...

Informative posting. I special like "Rice Porridge" But most of the time will be my breakfast.

Thank you for visiting mine with lovely comment and linking. I have catch your feed too.

Cheers~*
Tan.

Jen Jen said...

my recommendation for cafe now a day is barcarli (I think that's the spelling), garden cafe is not as good as it use to be, but it was bad for late night dinner at midnight or the AM

Wandering Chopsticks said...

I used to eat at Garden Cafe all the time a decade ago. These days my sister and I prefer Sunday Bistro too.

Hey, that's another thing we have in common huh? Cousins in Scandinavia. :)

EatTravelEat said...

I agree, Garden's cream soup is pretty good for the most part! I've never tried their other drinks other than the basic red bean ice, milk tea, or iced tea so it was nice knowing that their other drinks were good (that doesn't always happen, especially with boba in these style of restaurants- they seem to have left the boba for too long for most of the time).

The "hit" dishes look great! Agree about the chow fun. We always have to ask for less oil whenever ordering chow fun, but then again if there is no oil, the rice noodles get sticky and then the wok and everything gets hard to clean. :( It shouldn't of happened to you though! Those rice noodles look like they were steamed and served and not fried in the wok...

shavedicesundays said...

Carolyn, love chow fun too. Thanks for visiting!

Tan, I love your website. Lots of good stuff. Thanks for coming over here.

Jen Jen, will have to try that sometime. Which one was bad for dinner? Garden or Baccali?

WC, I heard about Sunday Bistro. Really good? Do your cousins eat real Vietnamese food?

Eat Travel Eat, do you ask for less oil everytime or just at Garden, knowing it will be greasy?

Wandering Chopsticks said...

I don't know if Sunday Bistro was really good, just a change of pace. Our favorite HK cafe is still Baccali.

My Scandinavian cousins you mean? Of course they eat VNese food.

shavedicesundays said...

WC, him I guess I have to check out Baccali then.

shavedicesundays said...

vincent, thanks for the site info.