China Garden - Converse

Reviews

• ★★★★½ Wonton Soup Mongolian Beef Visited Feb 11, 2017

  Saw A Coupon On An App - Stopped In To Try The Food

  I visited China Garden in Converse to try this small restaurant I didn't even know existed until I saw it on a coupon app.
  
  When I arrived it was late evening, and there were a few people dining in, though it's located in a shopping center mainly surrounded by neighborhoods, and it looked like most of the orders were to-go.
  
  I ordered the mongolian beef, which came with a dumpling soup and some interesting square wonton chips. The soup wasn't bad, but wasn't great either. The wonton chips were kind of thick, and barely softened in the soup.
  
  When the food arrived it was a surprise, because this was unlike any mongolian beef I'd ever had, being slices of beef in a brown sauce with onions, sliced discs of zucchini and celery, topped with sesame seeds. No hot peppers, and no oily sauce, it seemed closer to a hibachi or some other item. The rangoons it came with were wonton wrappers folded into triangles and deep fried, yet another item that was a bit different.
  
  I tried the mongolian beef, and it was okay, but more like a beef and vegetable stir fry. The sauce was similar to what you'd get on a beef and broccoli, and with the onion and zucchini, the plate had that generic beef-and-vegetable flavor you find at pretty much most Chinese restaurants.
  
  Overall the meal was just decent to average. Everything was prepared in an unexpected way, which isn't always a bad thing when it delivers on flavor, but this only delivered average flavor. I picked this place to give it a try and walked in blind, and the coupon helped with the cost a bit, but in the end it turned out to be probably a decent place to grab dinner conveniently if you live in a nearby neighborhood, not somewhere I'd make a special trip for.

  — Paul