New Hong Kong style restaurant in Temple City: Bay Garden Cafe

It opened just recently. Seven of us went. Overall, it was okay. We ordered Chinese dishes and Western dishes.

The Good

The Chinese dishes were done decently: salt and pepper pork, sweet and sour pork (I forget the actual name, but it is 京都排骨 in Chinese), beef chow fun, and pork & chicken plate. The pork was not overcooked. The chicken had a nice, crispy skin on it. Service was pretty good (more on this later).

The Bad

The Western-style dishes were tremendously undercooked. We ordered medium-rare filet mignon with diced potatoes, carrots, and broccoli. The filet mignon was barely seared–the inside was completely raw (most likely, they had just defrosted it, so the inside was too cold to cook properly). The other veggies were hard–needed at least five more minutes of cooking.

A lemon tea drink was awful.

The staff was very good about fixing the problems. The steak and the vegetables came back later correctly cooked. The tea drink was good.

I would say they are experiencing some significant teething problems, which is not entirely unexpected for a new, small restaurant. Prices were about average. Certainly, there are better Hong Kong style restaurants at this point.

If the restaurant survives for a few more months, I will probably go back to see if they’ve fixed their problems.

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thanks for taking the hit, I’ve been watching that one as I live in Arcadia. Hopefully it get better because I don’t want to keep going back to Garden for my HK cafe fix.

My kids went there recently and said that both the food and service have dramatically improved. I haven’t had the chance to visit, yet, but my kids know enough at this point that I mostly trust their judgment.

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