Palm Gardens Bar and Grill

I really wanted to like this place for many reasons.
Reason #1
The place looks very new, clean and the décor was pretty classy.
Reason #2
Service was friendly and attentive.
Reason #3
The menu was very creative and original. You can tell the chef really took the risk to be very inventive and unique when designing the dishes. Squid with pickled bitter melon, Sea bass with Chinese BBQ sauce… you have to admire their bold choices of how they combine these ingredients.
Reason #4
The presentation of the dishes were outstanding and impressive. I remember there was a fish sculpture made from melon skin as decoration on my sea bass plate.
However, even though overall you can tell the place really tries hard to be a classy original restaurant, they are still not quite there yet based on the following problems:
Problem #1
The service was friendly but very inexperienced. The waitress was often clueless about what we asked for, and she was cleaning up the table already when we weren’t even done with our food.
Problem #2
As mentioned before, the dishes were very unique but they don’t really work that well. As much as I appreciate they took the risk, the food just simply didn’t work for my taste. For example, they combined all the strong tasting ingredients such as fresh Asian celery, fresh ginger, pickles, and fresh mint all in one single squid dish. Everything was just overpowering and you can’t even taste the squid anymore.
I think I might visit the place again in the future just to give it another shot. For now, I think it’s fair to give it 3 stars.

This place when it first opened was absolutely great. The service was spectacular and the food was good, however, I gave it a one star because of its recent «grand opening» that changed everything. We went to eat lunch for mother’s day thinking that this would be a good place to take our mom to lunch, however, it didn’t end up that way.
When we walked in, the décor was very ‘classy” but the service was anything but. We were given a lunch menu and a dinner menu which I thought was very good that they separate the lunch from the dinner. I looked at both menu and I noticed that the dinner menu didn’t have any phở noodle soup on it. I thought this was a phở place or when we first came to this restaurant, it was a phở place. The waiter that I thought did such a great job on on previous visits was not there. Instead there was a waitress who took his spot who has no clue as to what she was doing. We inquired about a drink on the drink menu and she didn’t know what it was; she had to ask one of the guys in the back. When she gave us our spoons for the soup, the spoons had leftover food stuck on it which was the dirtiest thing I’ve ever seen from an Asian restaurant. She later admitted that she took the spoons from the wrong container. Instead of taking it from the clean containers, she took it from the dirty one. You would have to be blind to think that it was appropriate to give customers that. When we asked to get chopsticks to eat our soup because that’s how you’re suppose to eat PHO, the waitress said that they ran out of chopsticks. How is that suppose to be good business when you don’t have utensils for customers to use? When we tried to order the fried calamari, the waitress said that their fryer is broken, which was fine, except for most of their appetizers on the menu was fried!
The menu didn’t have a lot of phở selections and the price for phở went up from $ 4.99 to $ 6 which was a rip off considering that the phở was not fresh and there weren’t even a lot of meat. When we got our phở we asked for hoisen sauce and hot sauce, they gave us the bottle of hot sauce and a small little container of hoisen sauce. It was literally one tablespoon of hoisen sauce. How is anyone suppose to eat phở with one tablespoon full of hoisen sauce?
Overall, this place use to be great, but now they changed everything to be spectacular, but they forget that it’s a restaurant and customers are there to get good service and good food. I wouldn’t come back unless they change it back to the way it was when they first opened.

Just «opened» under new management. Asian fusion with a vietnamese Flare!
We came thinking this was a Phở place. but apparently the place now has new owners and a new menu.
We tried everything from the sampler appetizer platter to Scallops and Shrimp fried rice.
Now I know its not a raving review. but you will have to take into account that this place just changed hands. and the menu had totally changed. even the waitresses didnt know what the food would look or tasted like.
I will have to say that the food is pretty good. it could be better.
But again they just opened. so the food may get better. I will definitely come back and update this review.
An issue we had was that the beef roll appetizer was not really cooked through.
Another issue is we ordered spicy noodles. but it wasnt spicy at all.
The food in general was decent. I cant really complain or say it was bad at all.
I think if they figure everything out and fix the kinks. this place has some potential.
I did like the butter noodles. and the eggplant tofu.
In conclusion, give this place a try. it may turn out to be better than expected!