Asia Garden Review
My wife and I went to Asia Garden for the first time this afternoon and were not disappointed. The combination of quality of food plus the friendliness and the price has made Asia Garden our favourite restaurant.
Asia Garden, primarily termed as a buffet, includes a “Mongolian Grill”, a lot like Menggu Grill previously. I asked our friendly server Vivian to assist me with the grill as this was our first visit to their establishment. She took a stainless steel bowl and added fresh, cooled, uncooked ingredients to my specifications. The ingredients ranged from rice noodles, peanuts, shrimp, bok choy, squid, pork, THEN with a warning, very sparingly, Mongolian hot sauce mixed with oyster sauce and lastly, a curry sauce to top it off. Vivian then took the heaping bowl to the chef who grilled the mixture and in no time she returned to our table with the steaming hot food.
The Mongolian hot sauce is hot! I am accustomed to warnings of hot sauce turning out to be mild for my taste – not in this case! The dish was excellent with every ingredient having a distinct flavour and yet the combination of sauces lingering in the background.
The price includes the usual Chinese buffet but after my Mongolian dish I was quite satisfied. My wife ate from the buffet and said everything was very fresh and good also.
For the two of us, including a $3 tip, the bill was under $20.
Asia Garden, next to Visions
2 – 3363 Dunmore Road SE
August 28th, 2009 at 3:36 PM
Sean says:
Your specifications are very odd, and squid is gross! One time at work we had Chinese food, and I was happily eating it, and then suddenly I bit into octopus or squid. Who puts either of those in Chinese food? I didn’t eat anymore Chinese food that day.
I know something about hot food. When I was in Barbados in the summer of 2000, everything was hot (not just the weather). Lots of food was very spicy or had hot sauces (which seemed counter-productive to staying cool, since the weather was like +50 C every day). But I don’t really like hot/spicy food overall.
Welcome to Medicine Hat Media, Dean. I hope you do a lot of posts!
August 28th, 2009 at 5:15 PM
Vaughn says:
What? Squid/Calamari is a staple of Asian cuisine. To me it’s nothing so different from chicken; albeit, with a bit more “chewy” consistency. I like it best in noodle stir-fries.
August 29th, 2009 at 12:47 PM
Dusty says:
What you think is “Chinese food” Sean is in fact something called “Western Chinese food”. I don’t think you try actual foreign food enough, not every place uses ingredients that are popular in our culture. Everyone I know loves calamari except you. 🙂
This does sound like a mirror image of my experience at Menggu Grill, including the stainless steel bowl and the warning of the Mongolian hot sauce. Sounds like it might not be as expensive though, I really love this style of food.
Did they serve the most delicious soup in the world and a free bucket of white rice as well??
August 29th, 2009 at 2:12 PM
Sean says:
Of course I mean Western Chinese Food. This isn’t China! Even so, a friend of me and Vaughn’s parents, who are Chinese, own and operate a Chinese food place in Regina, and they never have squid. It just set the standard for me really. Calamari is okay, but it’s not something I would order to entirely eat by myself.
Get off my back about the boat!
August 30th, 2009 at 8:03 PM
Dean says:
In my experience the squid/calamari difference is that the squid I had at Asia Garden was the raw pieces of squid grilled (for the most part nicely cooked and tender not too chewy), while calamari is squid battered and deep-fried.
In 1996 one of my sisters’ lost her husband, and we talked about getting away to help recover from the trauma. In February, 1997 we were on our way to Montego Bay, Jamaica. One of our eating adventures was at a Jerk Pork place, with picnic tables and no cutlery. Very spicy and good food — I went around to the back of the cookhouse to wash up and use the restroom. At the back of the kitchen were slabs of raw pork laying on sheets of plywood in the sun with flies crawling all over them. Gag.
I never noticed the delicious soup or bucket of rice at Asia Garden as I had my face stuck in the Mongolian dish in front of me most of the time. I only looked up from time to time to say to my wife, “This is really good,” and she said the same about the Western Chinese Food.
March 28th, 2011 at 8:27 AM
Nat says:
Asia Garden is excellent. Every time I have been there (4 times this year!). It is the ONLY Asian buffet style restaurant I will go to where I trust the cleanliness. The bathrooms, floors, counters, glass, tables, cutlery…all of it is very clean. The past owners or events where this location had issues are just that- THE PAST. EVERY time I have gone to the Asia Garden, the cleanliness is impeccable. I like that when I can see into their back kitchen area, this cleanliness carries through there as well. The food is very well presented in the buffet and the Grill areas, temperatures are tip-top and the staff are genuinely friendly. The prices are excellent. The menu is very good and has many healthier choices to choose from.