U Garden Chinese Restaurant

2725 University Ave SE
Minneapolis, MN
612-378-1255
http://ugardenrestaurant.com/

Category: Chinese

Rating (Scale 1-10, with 10 being the highest):
Food: 8
Service: 8
Ambience: 7

Recommendation: Very Good. This is a great option for a Chinese restaurant by the U of M campus.

We have to caveat this review by stating that we had an excellent pre-selected meal at U Garden, courtesy of one of our couple friends who are considering having their wedding reception here. The restaurant is owned by our Cambodian friend’s mom’s friend and we got to try an excellent multiple course meal, consisting of her mom’s favorite dishes – some from the regular menu and some from a special banquet menu.

As we entered the restaurant, we were struck by the enormity of the place. It is large and hence popular for Chinese wedding receptions and events as they have the capacity to handle big groups. The décor isn’t anything special and is what we have come to expect from most ethnic establishments, except for one thing. Along the center of one wall, there is a large seating arrangement symbolic of the dinner table where the wedding party sits. It’s decorated nicely and in front of it is another table setting that presumably depicts how they set this restaurant up for banquets. It was pretty cool, but it would have been mega cool if we were treated to the same grandeur. The restaurant has an open feel to it, especially due to the windows that surround this place. They serve a lunch buffet, apparently the largest one on campus. The menu is pretty large and consists of many popular dishes such as Kung Pao Chicken and Sweet and Sour Chicken as well as more traditional Sichuan dishes. Like most Chinese restaurants, U Garden also has a special weekday lunch menu that is served with an Egg Roll for around $6.

We started our journey with the Seafood Crabmeat and Fishmaw Soup. It ended up being our least favorite dish. It was pretty bland on its own but tasted good when dressed up with soy sauce. The Shrimp Roll, which had pork and shrimp wrapped in tofu skin and deep fried was excellent. It was served with soy vinegar and a duck sauce on the side. The Lobster with Ginger and Onion was spectacular. The lobster tasted fresh and the ginger sauce was excellent – Nick will be talking about this dish for a long time. You could take this ginger sauce and dress any meat or veggie with it and get rave reviews. It doesn’t get much better than this. The Special Fried rice with Chinese Sausage and Shrimp was another winner. The Seafood combination, which is one of their house specialties, was served in a bird’s nest made of fried potatoes – very pretty. We couldn’t find a couple of the dishes we had on the regular menu so we assume they were part of the special banquet menu - the Baby Bok Choy with Chinese Shitake Mushrooms and Abalone (sea snails), both of which were delicious. The sauce in the mushroom dish was rich and flavorful and the mushrooms had a perfectly smooth texture. We also had an appetizer platter with a trio of appetizers – cold Pork Rinds, Fried Squid, and Shrimp. We ended our meal with a whole Fried Walleye – if you ever order whole fish, make sure you’re dining with someone who can carve the fish or at least one who excelled in high school biology. We have to commend the restaurant on the quality of their seafood – we predominantly had seafood dishes and we felt that the seafood was fresh (especially given that we went there on a Sunday night.) The servers were pretty knowledgeable and we were impressed with their explanations of the dishes, which is unfortunately not a common experience at most Asian restaurants.

$-$$. Free Parking in rear.