Tea Garden

a place to get good solid Cantonese food without the fuss.
the lemon chicken was kinda soggy, but it was so good and the sauce was the best I’ve ever had, so that made up for it.
a little pricey for what I’m used to as a Chinese place, but that’s just personal opinion rather than a real review.
I’m ordering from them again because I can’t find another place I like more or a place that delivers as quick as they do.

We sometimes order lunch at work from Tea Garden. The quality and taste if the food has been ok. We placed an order this week, and they kind of messed up our orders a bit. Jumbo shrimp dumplings weren’t really jumbo, missed an ingredient for special order of chow mein, and I ordered custard layered cake and they delivered 3 little custard pies… now that is wrong.
And delivery time took longer than usual. Overall it was average…3s will suffice.

The food was up there is being the worst I’ve had, and the delivery was 30 minutes late. Usually by the time I’m that hungry, everything tastes gourmet, but I couldn’t even finish. In all fairness, this was the only time I got food from here, so maybe they were having an off night. But it was bad enough for me to write this review and not want to go again.

Excellent Dim Sum, even late at night! We came in late after a Mariners game and they made us several fresh dim sum dishes.

I love their food! Good portions, good for leftovers. They are fast with getting out their orders for delivery too. Very good service in the restaurant as well!

Don’t know how the food is because we still haven’t received it.
We ordered online from Tea Garden through their website at 7:16. Estimated delivery was 45 — 55 minutes. At 8:21 I called them to find out where it was. They could only tell me that the order was ready but the delivery person had not arrived to pick it up. The girl who answered said she’d call the delivery person and call me back with a time. At 8:24 she called me back and said it would be about 10 more minutes. It’s now 8:36 and the food still isn’t here.
This is unacceptable. If we knew the delivery time was going to be this long we would have simply picked it up. We won’t be ordering from here again.
—–
Got the food. It was mediocre at best. Maybe it would have been better if it were something approximating at least warm, but it wasn’t. Definitely will never bother with this place again. Pity.

Tea Garden Restaurant is pretty much an average dim sum restaurant choice for lunch. We came here on Sunday around 1:30pm so it was somewhat empty already there. They had a large round table which accommodated our 10-​people party so it’s a decent choice for Sunday lunch for larger group.
The food taste decent and have enough salt on food that you don’t really need to dip anything into a sauce to add flavor. But some of dishes were bit too salty for my taste. Other than that, there aren’t much that I can say was different about this restaurant compared to other Chinese dim sum places in Seattle.

Average. The fried calamari, fried chicken wings, and the rice is good. I ordered Beef Chow Fun. Tastes like a cast iron skillet. Yuck. My roommate got the tangerine chicken although I’m not sure that’s what she actually received. Spring rolls are soggy and greasy. Cheese Rangoon is odd and needs work.

This is the spot I go to when I don’t have the patience for my favorite Eastside dim sum spot (Top Gun). Located in a less attractive part of town, this place is a hole-​in-​the-​wall, and is nothing fancy. What’s great about it is: never a wait, everything that I normally order at a dim sum joint… Is good. The staff is pretty helpful. Although, they don’t always understand your request. Price is decent. Finding parking is never an issue, they have their parking lot. So, If your looking for a quick dim sum fix and don’t wanna deal with all the crowds, wait, and BS… I recommend this place.

Please save yourself the trip. I ordered the General Tso’s Chicken. Each bite was hard. Either these were previously frozen and now have been dried out due to being heated again or they were really bad/​cheap pieces of chicken. Think old, dried out Chicken McNuggets that you have to take a drink after each bite.
I ordered the House Wonton soup. I’m used to Chicken Wonton. My first bite into one of these Wonton’s tasted funny. I looked down and it looked like uncooked chicken. I asked my partner «Is that uncooked chicken?» Nope… it was Shrimp. Great, I’m allergic to shrimp.
Unfortunately I can’t remember what my partner order but he was so disappointed with it he threw it away without eating half of it.
On a plus, the rice was good.
The other thing that caught my attention when we walked inside was how disgusting dirty it is. Just look at the carpet by the front door and the chairs by the front door. ABSOLUTELY disgusting dirty. I dont mean «Run a vacuum over them» dirty. I mean rip it up and throw it out. If they allow the customers to see that much filth right at the front door, it really concerns me about what we CAN’T see.
You could not pay me to eat here again. Not when there are so many other great Chinese restaurants around.

Review for Delivery — Our «go to» delivery in town. We have tried every Chinese restaurant that delivers for
to our home and this is always the most consistent and tasty. Friendly drivers and they deliver the correct food (should be obvious but there is nothing worse than waiting an hour for the wrong food).
We especially love the wontons in chili oil and are in general pleased to keep giving them business. What needs improving — their spring rolls. I wish they actually had filling in them. yup, you read that right, on numerous occasions a single piece of cabbage was in side…

So, I’m still new to Seattle living here for the past four months. However, I’m not knew to Chinese Food.
I decided to try the Tea Garden today mainly because I wanted delivery and I had a coupon from GrubHub for $ 5 off of the bill. So, my roommate and I order:
–Sesame Chicken
–General Tso’s Chicken
–Sm. House Wonton Soup
–BBQ Pork
I really wanted to like the food especially since I have been jones-​ing for some good Chinese food. However, I was highly disappointed with the decision as soon as the food got here.
The Sesame Chicken was a gelatinous mess of chunks of chicken with a brown flavorless sauce and a handful of sesames tossed on top of bed of broccoli.
The General Tso Chicken was alright. It was a nice balance of spicy and sweet but a weird vinegar aftertaste just put me off. It was dressed with a few pieces of overly stir fried broccoli. It was okay I definitely have had better and have had worse.
I can’t say much about the Wonton soup as I don’t like it myself. The broth was clear and full of large pieces of chicken and green onions in the broth. I tried a taste to see if the broth (like most Wonton soup broths) was salty, however, to my surprise the broth was actually quite flavorful without tasting like I was drinking a glass of water that had three bouillon cubes dissolved in it.
The BBQ Pork was a disappointment for me. I love Chinese BBQ boneless spare ribs and all that bright red sauce that they are drown in. This is what I was expecting when I ordered the BBQ Pork from Tea Garden. Unfortunately, this was not what I received. Rather I received a generous portion of dried out overcooked pork tenderloin that had potential to be something but was not that appealing at all.
Overall, I don’t think it was a horrible experience but I also don’t think I will ever eat there again either.

I order from here pretty regularly when I’m lazy and get delivery. The best dishes are their sesame chicken and the honey walnut prawns, which are very tasty but pricey for such little food. ($ 13 I think). DO NOT GET the lemon chicken. Lemon chicken is supposed to be light and citrusy. The sauce for this dish is thick and basically pure sugar — it tastes like lemon cake for fuck sake. I threw away the entire dish after a few bites. Cream cheese wrangoons are nothing to write home about. Overall, decent chinese and good when you don’t feel like cooking

Review is only for dim sum, not their regular menu items or delivery –
I’ve come to Tea Garden for week day dim sum with my coworkers for a couple of years now. It’s fast, cheap (stuff your face and still come out under $ 9), and they have their own parking lot so you don’t have to deal with finding parking in the International District area. Is it the best dim sum out in Seattle? Probably not, but the food is generally consistent and good and the service is attentive.
I like their ha gow — it’s packed with shrimp! Sometimes they’ll have a seasonal dim sum dish that you don’t typically find in your standard dim sum repertoire. If you feel the selection of dim sum is lacking, it never hurts to ask if they can make it for you. I’ve found that they are happy to. The only thing that I miss is their durian pastry which they usually have on the weekends.

We used to live around the corner from this restaurant, and enjoyed the food more than many other Chinese restaurants in the area. When we moved, we were happy to see that they deliver. So, we’ve been ordering online with them without too much of a fuss for the last several months. However, twice in the last month the service has been beyond bad.
The first time we had a problem, it took two hours to get our order. We chatted online with the ordering service after the food did not arrive after it had been over an hour. They said they contacted the restaurant and it was on its way. 20 minutes later I called the restaurant and asked about it, and they said t was on ts way. It arrived about 20 minutes later, and we do not live that far away.
The second time, after it had been 60 minutes, we contacted the online service to check on it. They said the restaurant lost our order, and it would be another 45 – 60 minutes! They asked if that was OK, and obviously we said no, it is totally unacceptable, and we cancelled the order.
I can understand one oversight, it happens, but two times in a month is terrible. Plus, we had ordered the dinner to share with a family member who had helped us with a home painting project that day, and he went home hungry because he had other obligations and ran out of time.
As much as we like the food, we are never ordering from them again.

This was so disappointing. Ordered for delivery:
–sweet and sour chicken
–honey walnut prawns
–egg drop soup
–rice
It was a Monday evening and my 7 year old and I were hungry. They said it would be 45 – 60 minutes… it took well over two hours. The food was cold, greasy and rubbery. Each of us took a few bites and ended up throwing it away (such a waste of food & money!). We had pb&j for dinner, instead.
I wanted it to be awesome. It was awful. Never again.

What a major letdown! With a half a dozen other great dim sum options in the city (or perhaps more) Tea Garden isn’t working hard to stay on top… or even in the middle when it comes to competing locally for hungry customers.
I came here with 10 other friends and though we were seated right away, I had a hard time sitting because the first thing I noticed was that all of the chairs were absolutely filthy. I’d rather sit on a fabric seat on the BART train in the Bay Area than sit on one of these chairs for a meal. But without any other options, I sat down and just tried not to think about it.
The décor and actual layout of the place is surprisingly nice. Nothing fancy, mind you. But from the outside this place looks like some kind of bubble tea shop. The paint and the sign are covered in really bright, almost juvenile colors. Then inside it’s just like any other restaurant with more calming colors and some random art on the walls.
There are plenty of tables for groups ranging from just 1 or 2 people up to about 20. They’ve got nice large tables for big groups and we spotted a group of 20 or so sitting at two massive tables that were pushed together. So they’re super accommodating and ready to handle whatever size group comes their way. Be mindful though that if there are a lot of large groups, you could get overlooked quite a bit as there are a lot of tables to serve. Seated way in the back, we didn’t manage to get the best choices of food off the carts. Many items seemed to be unpopular and those same items came back time after time. We finally had to place orders for the items we wanted because they simply weren’t available on the carts. My boyfriend was really surprised as he’s frequented this restaurant and said he’d never had this issue before. It was a bit disappointing because after a while it felt like we were being ignored intentionally because we kept declining the food off the carts. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to eat more food, we just wanted more options. There were no dumplings. no potstickers, no pork buns, no shrimp wrapped in those yummy wide noodles… It was all sticky rice and taro cake. Which we’d already had a few orders of.
I don’t like to rate an experience as low as two stars but this was the most disappointed I’ve been with any dim sum experience in Seattle before. So below average that I don’t think I’d bother coming back.

We were craving dim sum in the middle of the day and my coworkers and I stumbled across Tea Garden on the Eat24 hours app and decided to go for it. We ordered a variety of items ranging from shrimp dumplings to turnip cakes and the order came to around $ 35.00 including tip for everything.
The food tasted like your average dim sum and it was priced the same as some of the restaurants in Chinatown but the problem was that there were constantly late. We ordered from them twice and each time they were over 30 minutes late with our order. The food was still luke warm but it was really annoying to ask for something to be delivered at a certain time to end up waiting around with grumbling tummys for luke warm food.
I gave it 3 stars because they deliver… it would be even higher if they could figure out their timing better.

Fast service and I like the décor. Came for a large group of family style dinner, very basic.
Food was okay. Was looking forward to the mango jello/​pudding, but it was frozen…

We had a large family dinner here last night. I had a okay experience but I think they can do much better.
I was force to sit at the kid’s table but I don’t care, because more food to go around on the lazy susans! They are under staff so the service was very slow. The décor was leftover from the last three previous management or owners, nothing special or fancy.
We had about 14 dishes… so here we go…(pics)
Pros:
Crab Meat and Fish Maw Soup — great flavor, my daughter had 2 bowls.
Peking Duck — juicy, crispy skin and warm bun to make a sandwich.
Honey Walnut Prawns — perfectly cook, crispy and sauce is about right.
Salted Fish & Chicken Fried Rice — tasty, not overly salted
PeaVine — cook perfectly, but needs more garlic
Spicy Eggplant — perfectly cook but needed to be in smaller chunks.
Steam Fish — nicely cook, good flavor, no fishy smell which is a plus
Seafood Chowmein — okay but the noodles need to be more crispy
Parking Lot — big lot with vacant spots to park next Tea Garden
Salt & Pepper Porkchop — Well season but small portion
Chinese broccoli — hard to mess up this dish
Assorted appetizers — jelly fish was solid, didn’t care for the other cold meat.
Cons:
Typos on menu — Mice beef? I think they meant Mince beef?
Sea Bass HotPot — Needed more seasoning or some roasted pork in the mix, not sure it was the freshest fish.
Tangerine — not enough flavor, need to be more crispy, more heat than orange sauce.
chicken — okay, but not enough garlic garnish sauce for the chicken
Slow service or more staff with designated jobs…
The tempurture, super cold… I had to put on my jacket half my dinner.
I really want to give them 3.5 stars because the owner was the cook, it is family owned, friendly, and somehow the owner knows my mom & uncle. The owner greeted us after the meal and gave us extra rice to bring home. They also gave us fresh juicy oranges slices instead of the same old desserts.
Great change of venue for Chinese food with a large back area for large family dinners. I’m sure we will be back.