Peking Garden

If I were allowed to give no stars, I would. To make a long story short, beware of ordering food from here. My fiancée and I ordered some food and we were not given our full order. We called to complain, and the manager REFUSED to send the rest of our order unless we ordered more for at least $ 20 worth!!! Needless to say, we won’t be ordering from there anytime soon. Terrible service!

Food: ⁴⁄₅
Service: 3.5÷5
Cleanliness: ³⁄₅
Price: 3.5÷5
Like I’ve said in one of my previous post, we love Chinese food. More specifically, we love enjoying Peking Duck once in awhile. The amount of food is enormous for the two of us to go through, so we have lots of food to take home. Nevertheless, the food and the experience is delicious and it will forever be one of our favourites!
When you order Peking duck, you’re prepared with thinly sliced onions, green onions and cucumbers. These vegetables accompany the peking duck that comes out later throughout the evening. We didn’t order any appetizers such as soup because we knew that we had a huge feast coming.
As our Peking duck was being prepared, we were also brought out crepes to eat with our meal. The crepes are for making your own wraps: add Peking duck, your choice of vegetables, some sauce if you prefer, and voila! Enjoy.
What I liked about the restaurant was that they served the Peking duck on two separate plates. There’s nothing wrong with having it on one plate, but I appreciated having the Peking duck prepared individually for us. Is this common in Chinese culture? I’d love to know as I’m curious! :) I’m not sure if it’s plated per number of guests at the table, but when unsure, I think it’s fine to ask your server to have it prepared so. Won’t have to reach across the table!
I absolutely love the Peking duck here. The meats are so tender and juicy and its crispy skin is so delicious! With shredded cabbage, cucumbers and onions, it tastes so good. I have nothing bad to say about it! The amount of Peking duck you get is definitely for more than two people — it should accommodate up to 4 (maybe more if you have kids?), and as it comes with stir-​fry/​soup as well, it’s definitely a huge meal whoever you’re with.
We also ordered fried rice to enjoy with our meal because I was craving some. Whenever I go to a Chinese restaurant, I always need to have rice, preferably fried rice: P. The dish was light and a good side dish with our Peking duck. We ended up having lots of it wrapped up to go as we couldn’t finish it in one sitting, but it was well worth ordering!
After our Peking duck was prepared for us, stir-​fry came out a little later. Though there is the option of soup, we prefer the stir-​fry. It’s hubby’s favourite and I personally don’t like the soup very much either. This Peking duck stir-​fry is one of the best I’ve seen. We enjoyed most of it the day after at home and it was just as delicious as it was at the restaurant!
Overall, Peking Garden is our go-​to spot for Peking Duck. I mean, the restaurant’s name says it all, no? The restaurant is usually fully packed with customers so if you’re there at a bad time, prepare yourself for waiting. I think the service at the restaurant can be improved, as I saw a shortage of servers compared to the number of customers as we enjoyed our meal. This restaurant is a popular choice for families, groups, visitors and much more. I think that says a lot about the restaurant already! Many are return customers like us and some are new… some just drop by to pick their dinners up as well. The restaurant is a little far out from downtown Montréal, but if you can get there, I highly recommend that you try the restaurant. The Peking duck is also available in two sizes (half and full) so you can definitely try their popular dish at smaller portions!

TL;DR — Food is okay; balding, black-​haired manager w/​combover is prejudiced/​racist.
Possibly one of the worst restaurant experiences I’ve had.
My family stopped here for a quick lunch. We came in around 11:30a, and the place was filthy; they were still in the process of cleaning even though it was way past opening time. There were literal piles of dust and garbage on the floor. I normally would excuse people for this (things happen, humans are humans, etc.); but shouldn’t restaurants clean up the night before anyway?
Atmosphere-​wise, the place was pretty dark. It wasn’t very well lit and the grey-​haired host at the counter did not seem welcoming at all. He didn’t greet us as we came in and just stared at us even when we said hello and asked for a table. You would think he’d be more excited to see a table of six in his empty restaurant.
At least the waiter assigned to us was okay. He took our orders and tried his best to answer our questions about the food. However, he did ignore us after we ordered and didn’t bother checking up on us at all. We ended up ordering a whole roasted duck w/​18 pancakes; Chinese broccoli cooked w/​garlic; salt and pepper poker spareribs; the fish, tofu, and veggie hot pot; the Satay-​cook beef, and the pork chow mein.
The food was actually pretty decent. The duck was probably one of the better ducks I’ve had — the skin was perfectly crispy and they sliced it table-​side for you. Then they take the bones and either sauté it up for you with chili or make a broth out of it. The Chinese broccoli was actually a little old (it was slightly bitter and harder to bite), but it wasn’t too noticeable. The salt and pepper spareribs were ok, but we didn’t understand why they were battered and fried when they aren’t traditionally. Both the hot pot and chow mein tasted pretty average — not awesome, but not bad. Also, we asked for hot chili oil and this was the first ever Chinese restaurant I’ve been to that doesn’t have it. It’s not a major complaint, but when a place says they specialize in Szechuan cuisine, the heat factor needs to be stronger than Sriracha.
All of this so far would have warranted a three-​star rating — but what happened at the end of our visit turned our experience from average to terrible. During our time there, the restaurant began to fill up with other customers and the difference in treatment and service between our group and anyone else was palpable. They were welcomed with happy greetings and polite banter, as well as follow-​ups on service. I didn’t really want to jump to conclusions, but it became pretty obvious when I went up to pay that they didn’t value us as customers (at least as much as they valued their white patrons).
The two business men ahead of me paid and were treated with smiles and questions about service; but when it came to me, the man behind the counter changed his entire demeanor. His tone even changed — that’s how jarring this entire experience was. (Note: This wasn’t the man who seated us initially; that man had grey hair and this man had black hair and was balding in the back, which he attempted to cover up with a comb-​over.) When I said hello, he responded with the bill total. Then he went on to be extremely disrespectful to my grandfather when we were leaving. Grandpa went up to get toothpicks and attempted to strike up a passing conversation, but the man basically grunted and didn’t even look up. When I attempted to ask to speak to the grey-​haired manager that was there before, he actually raised his voice and told me that he was too busy to speak to me and actually waved his hand to shoo me away. He wasn’t even busy doing anything that entire time; just sitting there waiting for people to come up and pay/​come into the restaurant.
I can’t begin to explain how frustrating my entire experience with this restaurant was. Normally, I try to be a fair person; I give credit where credit is due and I always try to be aware of any personal biases that I may be projecting. I tried to look back objectively on what we could have done to warrant such poor treatment, but I honestly am coming up blank. We were a friendly group of three seniors, two twenty year-​olds, and an eleven year-​old; we were not loud, we didn’t have complicated orders, and we ordered from their menu with no special requests or changes. We also ordered all at once and didn’t flag them down for any other requests besides asking for napkins and hot sauce (which we wouldn’t have needed to do if they had checked up on us at least once during out hour and a half-​long service there).
Ugh. Just writing this makes me feel bothered again. I guess this place would be okay for take-​out or if you don’t mind dealing with a manager/​host that’s prejudiced, but I personally do NOT recommend this place to anyone and am glad that I won’t be able to support this business ever again.

We had take-​out and while the hot and sour soup was great, the rest was decidedly NOT. The ginger chicken was overcooked, dry and tasteless. The Mongolian beef was also badly over-​cooked and virtually tasteless. The General Tao chicken was crisp and tasty, but dry. We
decided that Peking Garden is not for us. We like our food edible.