Deer Garden Restaurant

Yep, it's another Chinese set meal, and this time it's at Deer Garden, which serves a mix of Hong Kong style cafe food and combos along with more traditional dinner dishes. I've been here before for lunch, and found their lunch combos to be a great value. You get a huge portion entree plus soup and drink for under 10 dollars.

Today, I was there for their dinner set meal, which includes soup and dessert. They have a 2-item set for $26 and 4-item set for $50, and ended up charging us $37.5 for a 3-item set meal (before tax). Unfortunately, this set meal only comes with 2 bowls of rice, and they charged us an extra $2 to upgrade to a bucket of rice, no refills.

The soup of the day was pork and water chestnut soup. This came in a medium sized bowl, and was rather flavorless. We had seconds simply for the sake of finishing it off and not letting it go to waste.

The first dish to arrive was minced pork with eggplant and salted fish.This was served with a sweet chili garlic sauce and was extremely delicious. Unfortunately, cooking eggplant usually means lots of oil and this dish was soaked in the stuff, but it was so good that we didn't mind. We spooned off whatever oil we could see floating on top, and devoured the rest. This is a favorite dish of mine, and Deer Garden makes an excellent version. One of the best I've ever had.

Our second item was satay beef and vermicelli hotpot.  This was also very delicious. Large chunks of lean sliced beef with onions, green/red bell peppers, garlic, scallions, and pineapple in a hearty satay sauce on top of a large pile of firm, yet tender vermicelli. Although the portion size wasn't small, it paled in comparison to the hotpot dishes served at Rainbow Butterfly, and was more expensive too.

The last main to arrive was the assorted seafod thai spicy style hotpot. This wasn't spicy or very well seasoned at all. It was ok as a soup dish, but wasn't flavorful enough to go on rice. There were chunks of shrimp, mussels, imitation crab sticks, cod, squid, bean curd skins, tomatoes and scallions in a  thin tangy soup. Since it was so watery, we couldn't really pack it to go, and finished it up at the restaurant. We wouldn't order this again.

The dessert of the day was coconut milk tapioca soup. Tapioca soup is usually one of my favorite desserts but unfortunately, this was also very mild and could have used more sugar. Other than that, it was creamy and smooth and not objectionable to eat.

Deer Garden is a great place to get lunch, but for dinner, Rainbow Butterfly nearby is a much better deal. You get a a much larger soup of the day, and a bucket of rice comes as default. Their hotpots are also much larger. 

Pros:
-good lunch combos
-large lunch portions

Cons:
-not expensive but not cheap either
-busy
-understaffed and indifferent service
-some dishes lack seasoning

Notes:
-small parking lot next to restaurant, often packed
-mall parking across the street or park on side streets

Dinner Menus:

dinner set menu 1

dinner set menu 2

 

dinner set menu 3

dinner menu 1

dinner menu 2

dinner menu 3