01/02/09

Sad About Szechuan

by maryckgg

When we discovered Szechuan Garden a couple years ago, my husband and I were thrilled to find our new favorite restaurant. The food was always unique and delicious, and kept brining us back for more. However, after our experience on New Year's Eve I have to say that we will never return to Szechuan Garden, and we do not recommend this restaurant to others.

For about a year the service at Szechuan Garden has gone completely down hill, but the food was so great that it made up for it. Now however, the service is so bad we will never go back. On New Year's Eve the restaurant was mildly busy, but not crazy like other restaurants. We were seated and waited 45 minutes to place our order. We started getting our food about an hour later, but only one plate at a time. It took nearly an hour to get most of the food delivered, and one member of our party never got anything at all!

Meanwhile, people who had come into the restaurant well after we did had their food delivered and had eaten before we got our food! We were always nice to the waitress and never said anything bad until nearly three hours had gone by with deplorable service. I have never been treated so badly by any resturant personnel, and the bad part is...we put up with this because we loved their food! The waitress and manager were rude and disrespectful, and I will never eat at Szechuan Garden again. I've never been so truly offended by a restaurant and it's disappointing.

08/15/08

Great Authentic Szechuan Food

by achaudhari

The food here is clearly the best in the Salt Lake City area. There is a wide selection of dishes that are not available anywhere else. We have lived throughout the East Coast and Midwest and the food here is comparable to the better restaurants in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. They offer standard choices like Kung Pao and Sweet and Sour (for the less adventurous) but why waste a meal on those when there are great duck, fish, and vegetarian choices! The carry out menu seems to have a more Americanized choice of foods so order off the in house menu.

The other reviewers seem to have stuck with the less adventurous choices, and so, missed out completely on what this restaurant offers. For all of the very mediocre choices for eating in the Salt Lake area, it's refreshing to find a great place like this. Also, friends of ours that live in China have recommended this as the best Chinese food in the area.

03/03/08

Designed for US tastes

by stormwa

They recently won the Best Chinese Restaurant according to votes in Salt Lake City Magazine. Those voters don't know Chinese food. Highly sweetened, over sauced and gloppy, these are the hallmarks of a restaurant cooking to Americanized tastes rather than reflecting their original culture. Sad to see that the average diner still hasn't clued in to what Chinese cuisine really has to offer.

However, you can't argue with happy diners so they do fill an important market niche. They do work hard to please the customers, are polite, quick with service and happy to accommodate a diner at another table who ordered hot food and then couldn't handle the spice. And while not authentic, it's pleasant food in its own right.

And the Hot and Sour soup is pretty tasty with a generous dose of chile garlic sauce. Not much meat but still good.

• Pros: Good service, attenttive, work hard
• Cons: Just another Chinese American joint.

03/09/07

Stellar Garden

by stanfunky

Szechuan Garden is as good as advertised, a great place with wonderful food and selection. We have seen items on menu that are not seen anywhere else in the state. The service is usually great, once in a while they lag a bit on seating, but normally within 2 minutes of arrival you are sitting looking at a menu. The General Tso's is stellar, whether spicy hot or slightly less so, and the food is more authentic than most Chinese we run into. Highly recommended.

• Pros: quiet, comfortable, generous portions
• Cons: a restaurant like this deserves a stand-alone building of its own.

12/09/06

Sodium garden

by gringo_stu

We have visited SG several times, firstly on the recommendation of Ted Schefflers review in the City Weekly. The first visit was nice enough, hey we went back several times.

The food is certainly different to the normal Chinese fare of SLC. They have both a normal Americanized menu (ala sweet and sour) as well as a traditional Chinese menu featuring fish lips, various animal organs and so forth. We were continually drawn back, especially as we are keen experiment and try new flavours when we dine out. On top of this the prices are very reasonable and the service is attentive and friendly.

The last two times we have visited have somewhat dented our enthusiasm for the place though. Put simply the food is salty beyond compare. I understand a lot of the components used in asian cooking ala soy, fish sauce etc are heavily salt laden but when the skin in my mouth begins to peel away from salt excess, it brings the whole experience down.

It is quite a shame, as the chef here is obviously talented. Indeed the menu details his extensive career in his native China. Some of the flavours of the Chinese speciality dishes we have tried were very pleasant.

For the time being we have stopped patronising the restaurant. Maybe we will return when we get a craving for some of the more unusual menu items in the future.

• Pros: Some unique dishes to SLC
• Cons: salty, very quiet ambience