South China Garden

ADHD: Great Ginger Scallion Crab and interesting and cheap enough $ 1 oysters. No frills, plastic bag on table Chinatown Seafood place with good service.
Atmosphere: Cliché Cantonese Chinatown restaurant, with lighted pictures, Asian symbols, and «death row» tanks of seafood with Lobsters, crab, and fish, but adequately clean, bright and not scary.
Food: Unilocal did not steer wrong. The seafood here is fresh, like all other places in Chinatown. As I’ve said before, fresh ingredients alone does not a 4 star review make. The Ginger Scallion Crab and lobster are excellently executed. They are coated just enough to make the sauce stick in a way that is finger licking good. It’s always a market price situation in Chinatown. I got the peapod leaves #9 vs. #7. I prefer 7. Somehow this isn’t quite as good as say, Ken’s Asia taste, but not bad.
They offer cooked oysters with Chinese sauce for $ 1 each. Yum. The fish dishes are all nice here. In general, a solid execution. If you’ve a large group (think circle tables) that wants to try Cantonese seafood for the first time, this is a great place to try out.
Pricing: Currently, Crab is going for $ 35, and Lobster is $ 25 for 2 lobsters (around 2.5 lbs with shell). Other dishes range around $ 15, but are all very large in size.
Service: Nice waiter who is pretty attentive and patient with loads of questions. They changed plates regularly and brought a bowl for shells. They even know well enough to bring the shell cracker contraption and offer extra wet naps upon request. Super chilled out place.

We went here for a family gathering last November. Since it was a relatively large group, we reserved the private room upstairs, which was nice.
Food was the usual Chinese fare.
Service was terrible though even by Chinatown restaurant standards. The waiters kept forgetting to bring stuff like napkins or water. The last straw was when they served these prepackaged pastries at the end of our meal. The buns w/​a sweet filling were not steamed long enough and still cold in the center. When we pointed this out to the waiter, he apologized, but made no offer to send out new ones. All they cared about was getting us out as fast as they could.
(If you want good Chinese food, I suggest going to Danny Ng’s Place on Bowery instead. The only downside is that it can get very crowded, especially on the weekend.)

I don’t mind paying in the mid-​$ 20 range for a good seafood dish for the table, but when that dish (triple delight) features overcooked, chewy squid and copious amounts of stir-​fried celery my enthusiasm is dampened a bit. When the seafood is not quite fresh enough to be shown off in such a simple manner (bland white sauce and a few veggies) I start to feel a little taken.
And that sums up how I feel about South China Garden: perfectly nice place, the food is OK, but I felt just a little taken by the prices.
Here’s another example: They make a great black bean sauce, but undermine the simple beauty of spareribs in that sauce by indifferently stir-​frying them with chopped bell pepper and onion, then charging $ 16 for the result. The flavor is there, but the price is a little extravagant for something so very pedestrian.
On the plus side, an order of sauteed show pea shoots was perfect, and reasonable at $ 11. Eight Treasure Winter Melon Soup was just fine, and a bowl large enough to feed six as a starter was $ 12, which I’d consider not bad, either.
The bottom line? I’ve had much better food for less money in Chinatown. And I’ve had food this good for much less. So I doubt I’ll be back. I’ve got nothing against pedestrian Chinese food — I love it, actually — but not when it’s priced like a more upscale restaurant.

Came here for an early dinner (~5pm) on Saturday evening. We were 12 people (mix of adults + young kids) and had reserved, but it wasn’t necessary — at this hour we had most of the place to ourselves.
Ambience is pretty non-​existent — bare-​bones room, harsh lighting, white plastic tablecloths that feel like trash can liners. Service however was good! A young waiter came over, sat against an adjacent empty table, and patiently answered questions, translated the specials written in Chinese on colored sheets along the wall, and gave us what turned out to be good ordering advice.
Food was fresh, piping hot and very well prepared. Lobster cut up and sautéed with black bean sauce was succulent, sweet and cooked just to the point of tenderness; this dish also avoided excessive saltiness. Sweet and sour pork chops had a not-​too-​sweet or thick sauce with a good vinegar kick. Fried squid with scallions and green chiles was crisp and light, and sautéed conch and scallops with mixed vegetables was tender and flavorful. We had a whole fried chicken, with moist meat and crisp, burnished skin; chow fun beef with a smoky wok sear; and black pepper shrimp with a nice hot kick. Also a big plate of delicious sautéed pea shoots, some beef fried rice, and a steamed whole grouper (chosen from the tank up front) with ginger and scallions — sweet, moist and delicate snow-​white flesh.
Tab pre-​tip came to $ 216 — less than $ 20/​head. Really good meal, friendly helpful service and overall a great experience for this type of food — definitely would go back.

AUTHENTIC CHINESE FOOD, I have found you!!!
I think I have found myself a place to satisfy my Chinese food cravings. Most of the dishes that we order are generally very well portioned, very flavorful and similarly to homemade style. Some of the popular dishes include Pork Chop with salted black pepper, Crispy Fried Chicken, Jumbo Shrimp with walnut, and Sizzling Beef with black pepper. For complementary, they serve a soup of the day in the beginning and some cut-​up fruits in the end. The tables are huge and perfect for large groups but they are kind of old and wobbly. The service is slow sometimes. The bathroom is not all that clean. And the place is not even that appealing. However, those factors simply will not deter me from coming here for mouthwatering Chinese food!

I love it. I haven’t had family style Chinese food for quite some time. Went with my coworkers to celebrate those who passed their exam. Price is reasonable. Craving for some authentic Chinese food with a family style? South China Garden is the place. :)
Ordered lobster for twice. It was with my coworkers at first. then with my buddies in NYC… Being a Chinese. There are lots of things I can comment here… but I guess it will take up 10 pages to write each dishes… because we ordered approximately 13 dishes at first…
Will recommend some highlights… The lobster is really cheap with around $ 25 dollars for a pound. I love the egg plant as well… and the crispy chicken that was recommend by the waiter. I guess there was a season which the oyster was pretty cheap… I love the oyster as well…
You can’t compare a Chinese Restaurant service to be like a dating restaurant. the restaurant is clean… and their service is pretty good. and the waiter knows what to recommend you!
By the way. They do not accept credit cards! So. prepare some cash!!!

Thank you Unilocalers for leading me to this gem of a restaurant in Chinatown. Normally, I go to the heavy hitters so am glad to find a Canto restaurant.
I came w a group of 16 late on a Sunday night. We didn’t have to wait at all and were seated at there only one large table. Ordered the set menu and hopefully waited for good food… and boy, were we pleased.
Seafood vegetable broth was yummy. Perfectly hot, well seasoned, and seafood-​esque in taste. I liked that they served the ingredients outside of the soup and that you could see the baby bok choy was perfectly green. There were a lot of other great dishes that came out including mayo shrimp, lobster (tasty), vegetables, and a lot mushroom dishes. A few of the dishes tasted the same towards the end as they used the same clear, thick, salty sauce. Can’t describe it more than that…
We witnessed a fight between a customer and the cashiers when the customer started yelling about the fish and how terrible it was. I’m not sure why the employees didn’t stop the fight before it escalated into a full verbal assault from the customer. Interesting how in Asian owned shops, the customer is not right esp. when it comes to $$. Not saying the customer was right in this situation… but just interesting to observe.

This place is crazy! It is literally one of the loudest, most chaotic restaurants in Chinatown! I feel like I’m shouting as soon as I enter the restaurant and there’s always a ringing in my ear when I leave.
But the food, both times that I came here was really, really good. They have this lobster special — 2 lobsters prepared the way you like it for 20 bucks. It’s only in Chinese, so you really wouldn’t know about it unless you could read it.
The other food on the menu is pretty good too. I recommend the Chicken and Eggplant in a clay pot and also their mixed veggies.
Service is spotty at best, but as long as you’re loud enough, they’ll come back and take care of you. If you don’t come with enough people to fit a whole table of 10, then they’ll make you share it with strangers. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.

We went here from a recommendation of a friends father for our Chinese New Year dinner. I have to say it was right on. The service as atypical of the usually curt waiters in other places. Here they are actually friendly and helpful. They were very accommodating with our large group of 12 people.
I took some of the recommendations from other reviews and everything was a hit in the group. The whole fish, pea leaves with shrimp, sizzling steak plate, melon soup were all terrific. I would not hesitate to recommend this restaurant to anyone.

Came with Unilocalers: Wennie S., Jasmine C. & Derek L.
This place was packed! but luckily there are extra seating upstairs (enough for about 25 ppl).
Décor:
–As Athena C. stated in her review, white plastic bags are used as tablecloth. I don’t blame the restaurant since this speeds up the cleaning time but definitely not ‘green’.
Service: 2.5÷5
–typical service. They take your order, bring the dishes and disappear.
Food: 4.5÷5
–The salted pepper pork chops were savory and mouthwatering. Delicious! At $ 10, they give you a good portion.
–2 Lobsters: savory as well with a decent amount of lobster meat. I’d recommend this as well
–Rice casserole with pork and eel: the pork is just like the spare rib pork you find at dim sum. You get alot of rice in a clay pot with meat as the top layer.
I can’t believe I always walk by this place. Maybe cause I’m so focused on Jing Fong. Definitely a must try if you want some authentic dishes.
What’s funny is that they do serve some Americanized dishes like Orange chicken.

I usually eat here alone, and always get stuck at a large round table with strangers. To my left is typically a trio of old Asian biddies who speak sharply at each other, order a flurry of dishes and then eat, open mouthed, in stewed silence.
To my right is an old man eating some sort of heavily corn starched, gooey dish with translucent pieces of squid. He likes to eat slowly, methodically, staring at me with every bite.
I order my usual: Crispy chicken with garlic sauce.
Ohmigoodness. The crispiest skin + the moistest white meat all smothered with that garlicky soy sauce that I can suck up with a straw.
The best deal is lunch time where they serve practically half the bird with a random soup (with random, indisgtinguishable vegetables… I just eat it and don’t ask too many questions) with unlimited rice for $ 6.95. People claim that Congee Village has the best crispy chicken, but I find it drier there and less succulent. Try it here. Trust me. (I’m the best friend you’ve always wanted.)
I’ve had other stuff here also: fried shrimp rolled in gobs of mayo which looks disgusting but I like more than I’d ever admit. The black pepper short ribs are tasty but a bit chewy and salty. The lobster is okay. The steamed whole fish with sauce is pretty good.
It’s definitely a spot to bring a Chinese speaker and order a bunch of dishes to share. They have a bunch of package dish specials at the top of the wall written on fluorescent papers, which might be a good option.
All in all, it’s a tad dirty but a whole lotta comfortable.

Man, I wish I had discovered this place earlier! I’ve always been in a bind when going to Chinatown. never really knew where to eat!
Cantoon Garden… which I think was renamed to South China Garden or something, is great. Awesome food, reasonable prices, and polite service. I don’t think I’ve had such a comfortable meal at a Chinese restaurant in a long long time. Most Chinese restaurants skimp on service and quality but not this place!
The best dish of the night was definitely the steamed buffalo carp fish. I really like this fish because it’s big, fatty, and doesn’t have a lot of bones. Plus its meat is really tender and flakey, so it goes really well when steamed. The dish was only 16 bucks and covered the entire plate! Great value for your money, and it tastes amazing! You can definitely opt for a more expensive whole sea bass but why pay double the price?
I saw some people get the sauteed lobster with ginger and scallion… I was SO tempted to get that too, but I’d much rather save the lobster for a special occasion. It looked DELICIOUS though!
Next time, I definitely want to try one of the beef casseroles. I tried making it at home but it never comes out right.
Definitely go to Cantoon Garden if you’re looking for authentic Chinese food. It reminded me of home :)

One of the best Cantonese restaurant in China town. Their steak sizzling plate is soo yummy! The steak is tendered, flavorful, cooked just right with lots of peppers, garlics and onions. The beef chowfun was also soo good. The chow fun noddles were chewy and the beef was very tender. We also had the eggplants, chicken and salted fish casserole. I loved it, just like what I used to have in Taiwan. But beware, if you never had salted fish casserole, you might be a bit turned off by the smell. Kind of smells like stinky tofu or if you don’t know what that is, old socks. But once you take a bite, you will love it…
Everytime i come here, it’s super busy… so be prepare for a short wait.

Excellent place! 2 lobsters for $ 25, all cut up and ready to be devoured, really doesn’t get much better than that. Also, be sure to order the salted baked squid. It sounds odd, but you will definitely not regret it.
Also, here’s a tip: The location is right, but the name is not. It’s South China Garden.
The place itself doesn’t have much atmosphere, but the food and the cost make up for it. 7 people ate (very well) for $ 85 dollars! What?!

Now known as South China Garden (formerly Cantoon Garden), I went to this place with some friends for a lunch. We decided to get two big dishes, which were the Fillet Bass with Tofu in Casserole, and the Eel with Black Bean Sauce with rice in Casserole. We got some free soup, which consisted of this warm broth with some carrot slices inside. It was decent, made me feel warm and a little fuzzy inside, and it was not too salty compared to other similar soups that I had, so that was definitely good.
I ordered the Fillet Bass with Tofu in Casserole mainly because it was the most similar dish compared to one of my favorite Chinese dishes, Hong Siu Ban Nam Bo, and to see if New York’s Chinatown can do better than Boston’s Chinatown. It was awesomely tasty, and it was the dish that mostly ate while I was there. The fish was juicy and a little crisp from the hotness of the hot bowl, and the tofu was pretty good. It was soft and flavorful from the brown sauce. There was some Chinese cabbage in the bottom and it was decent. I thought they put in the right amount of sauce in the dish, so it was definitely not too greasy compared to other versions of the dish in Boston’s Chinatown. After putting the fish and tofu with the white rice, I was enjoying my lunch a lot. My friends also liked the dish, especially my Toisanese Chinese friend, who never had this type of dish before.
The Eel with black bean sauce was okay overall. I thought the eel was really bony, and the black bean sauce did not have much of a spiced kick that I was looking for. The rice was good, the black bean sauce gave it a great flavor, despite lacking the spiced kick. I definitely would have enjoyed this dish more if the eel was meatier.
Overall, I had a decent lunch, and next time I come back, I would probably see how their Suk Mai Ban Nam (Fillet Bass with Cream Corn) and Ju Yim Sin Yau (Salted Baked Squid) are. I would definitely come back to this place for my favorite dish, which is of course, the Fillet Bass with Tofu in Casserole.

DAMN YOU, ‘Jersey Shore’! It’s all your fault. It’s YOUR fault I spent money when I was broke, and it’s YOUR fault I ate carbs when I was on a diet.
We were watching ‘Jersey Shore’, the cream of MTV’s crop, and it was the episode where there’s drama because the Sitch doesn’t want to clean up after cooking for surf n turf night. Besides losing many brain cells and making a mental note to burn my dress that I saw a girl wearing on the show, a lightbulb went off in my head… heeeey wait a sec, I want some lobster and crabs too!
We schemed on how we could get some; we thought about buying crabs and cooking them ourselves, until we realized it would be cheaper to just eat in Chinatown. Aaah New York, the only city where it’s cheaper to eat out than cook.
Seated right away at a table lined with a white Hefty trash bag-​esque tablecloth, we ordered the Cantonese lobster (1 for $ 14, 2 for $ 25), salt baked squid, and Peking pork chops. Mmmm now THAT’S what I call a surf n turf.
Even though we came for the lobster, which was delicious at first but got monotonous by the end, the Peking pork chops were the best. My pork face was so satisfied by the honey colored, sweetly glazed and crispy chops. There goes the diet. But if I had to do it again, I would — c’mon, we all know my diet is a big hoax that’ll never last.
The waiters are typical Chinatown waiters, they aren’t going to baby you or even speak to you in English. But they’re quick and they’ll remember your order even if they don’t write it down or make eye contact with you. It’s very cut throat getting a meal in Chinatown, like survival of the fittest. They should change the saying to, ‘If you can make it in New York’s Chinatown you can make it anywhere.‘
At least something good came out of ‘Jersey Shore’ — a big olé pork and lobster filled belly. GTL baby. GTL.

Great Cantonese food, not pushy service (rare in Chinatown), and ugly table cloth and décor. This is what you get at Cantoon Garden.
So here we are, 9 of us, ordering a Seafood Combo for 8 for merely $ 168 pretax and tips. This surely is a great deal because it includes lobster, double cooked pork, squid, fish, walnut shrimp, fried chicken and more! Every dish was great except the fried rice which was bland as a glass of water.
Their table cloth could not be more vintage than my grandmother’s pajama. It is white vinyl tablecloth that just totally makes this place cheap and old school.
For the service, price and taste of the majority of the dishes though, I still give it 4 star :)

This place is amazing at seafood! Try the conch. Yes, just do it. It’s a bit chewy, but they season it so well. Also, the softshell crab was so amazingly seasoned.
The menu descriptions are, well, nonexistent. So take a risk. It’s the type of place where anything you’ll order is going to be good.
Service is severely spotty, so be ready to really flag someone down when you’re ready for the check.
The portions are great, so come with an empty stomach!

Inexpensive, check. Tasty, check.
Holely smokes look at all this food was the first thing that popped into our heads when the dishes came. We’ve eaten here in the past family style and we’ve forgotten how much food there is. This is a family style restaurant and there isn’t any soy sauce chicken like your typical take out joint.
It would get five stars if the bathroom (s) were a bit cleaner.

I often say that there are two Chinatowns. There is «old skool» Chinatown with no frills settings with cheap, tasty food and then there’s «new» Chinatown with flashy settings and overpriced food. Cantoon Garden qualifies as the former.
The interior is nothing to write home about with its white walls and faded out pictures of waterfalls from the 80’s. However, the food is super tasty. The goat clay pot boil is awesome, their Chinese spinach rocks and their fish is super tender and delicious.
The service is quick and efficient, but not super friendly — which is another feature of the «Old Skool» Chinatown. If you want a good, cheap meal with your family or friends, this is a good choice for good old fashioned Chinese food.