Zen Gardens — Restaurant in Mississauga

grab a snack

I Came here for Mother's Day dinner and could not have been more disappointed.

Overall, the quality of the food is great for being a vegan/vegetarian Asian restaurant, however, the service is what really made the experience extremely poor.

While we were being seated (we were a party of 10), our server asked us if we were Chinese.. I don't see why this is even an appropriate question to ask..

She presented a Mother's Day menu which was a priced fixed menu as well as a standard a la carte menu. After reviewing the price fixed menu we decided to order off the standard menu. We start writing down our items and call a different server to come pick up our order. This server reviews our list of food items, and then tries to convince us to order the fixed price menu ($200+) because three of the items on our list were on the fixed price menu. We explain, no thank you, we would like to stick to our list... then says well if you want to do that then you will have to take these items (the dishes which are present on both stand and price fix menus) off or just order off the fixed price menu.

So we review, and try to make adjustments. Then the first server who asked us if we were Chinese comes back to our table as we're trying to pick other items comes to scold us regarding the time. Saying that we have lost time because there is a reservation at 6pm showing up and the kitchen is busy. Ok, A) not my problem that it's Mother's Day and your establishment is busy, and B) It's 4:30... C) The restaurant wasn't even at capacity, it was half full.

Lastly, she mentions to make sure we order everything that we want because after we submit it we will be unable to order more food. I have NEVER in my life heard of a restaurant that didn't want to make as much money as possible on one of the busiest days in the industry.. but again... we comply..

We put in our order, and the dishes begin to come out. All dishes came out except for one (which we ordered double of) and after 15 mins of waiting, staring at an empty table, we decided to cancel the last dish and just go home.

This is where an already bad experience gets worse...

We call over whoever we can at this point and follow up with our dish. No one seems to know what's happening. The server comes back to us and explains that they have run out of our dish. We say thank you, we would like the bill. We think why wouldn't you tell us that this dish has run out early on during our time there so that we can replace it?

We get the bill, and the two dishes we never received are on there. We again explain that this has not come out, and the confusion is all over their faces because it looked like they were trying to prepare this quickly. So, did you have the dish or not?

The server who originally sat us is asking us what the issue was, and states that you said to cancel the order so we didn't bring it out... how can we cancel an order when you claim to not even have it available?! And we cancelled it because 20 mins after finishing our dinner why would we want to eat a main dish with nothing to eat it with?! So... you forgot it then..

I begin to explain the frustration and instead of listening to us, recognizing that the dish had been forgotten and apologizing she continues to blame us!

We did our job ma'am... we rushed to write down our items (some of which we wanted to order but were told we weren't allowed), didn't add more items to our list even when we wanted to because we could've eaten more , AND we finished by 5:15... the ONLY job you had to do was take our order to the kitchen and bring out what was asked...

We didn't get an apology.

Service here is usually decent. But this was...

This was my second time at this restaurant. My first was for New Years dinner 2 years ago. During this dinner the restaurant was almost empty (2 tables occupied), which was pretty surprising and made me assume that it wasn't very good. But since it was empty we received great service and for an all vegetarian restaurant the food was really tasty. I really appreciated that they made some huge substitutions to my order without any objections. My brother and I both got the bento box dinner, which came with purple rice, 2 dim sums, a spring roll, miso soup, a fritter, and the curry. What I particularly liked about the food was that for asian cuisine the food wasn't greasy and drenched in oil, which is rare. I also loved that they tried to make all sorts of fake meat options, such as chicken drumsticks. However, we totally forgot about this place and didn't visit again until recently. On this recent visit we just made it on time to get the last available table. Shockingly the restaurant was packed! I ordered the same thing as my last visit (bento box with eggplant curry) since I liked it a lot. My brother got the mushrooms. But this time I tried making the same substitutions as last time and it turned out be a bit of a hassle, whereby they said they cannot do it. I had to explain to them that during my last visit there was no problem, so finally they agreed. The food tasted awesome, but my only complaint is that my food came much earlier than my brothers, whom ordered an appetizer (chicken drumsticks) and a main, and both of which came when I was half way done. The review for the fake chicken was that "it was ok...not that great", but the mushrooms were amazing. Other than that, the prices are reasonable, portion size was good, decor/ambience was great, service was as fast and efficient as they could considering the rush. So if you're looking for some good but different kind of vegetarian asian food I would definitely recommend Zen, but would suggest to make a reservation if you're planning on going during a...

Awesome vegetarian food with lots to choose from. Mostly vegan, but the items that do contain eggs or dairy are marked on the menu, and our waitress checked that we were aware and okay with the eggs in our order. The menu is mainly Chinese but there's a few other Asian options thrown in there. There's a good balance of imitation meat vs vegetable-focused dishes, and even the fake meats seem to be mostly not super-processed stuff, lots of seitan and soy protein. You order by writing down the numbers you want on a piece of paper, which was a litte confusing to us as first-timers because the paper provided was the back of an old receipt; we thought it was just an old receipt left on the table until someone came by to explain. We ordered a variety of items to share: steamed dumplings, assorted seitan platter, xiang chuen pine nut fried rice, and a special hotpot that I can't remember the name of. They got order tickets mixed up somewhere and started by bringing us fried wontons and kimchi that we didn't order, and we were confused but thought maybe it was a complimentary appetizer, and started eating. Then they brought out soy nuggets and we realized this was definitely not right and said something, and the waitress was very apologetic. She took the nuggets back but since we had already dug into the wontons and kimchi we offered to just keep those. After that, our correct order came out in a timely manner. All the food was delicious, super flavourful, great textures for the meat substitutes. The seitan platter was notable in that the different seitan preparations didn't just use different flavours but were also cut differently which made each flavour a unique experience. The pine nut rice had an interesting herbal taste. The portions for the entree plates are very generous; we were full and had some leftovers. I regret not saving room for dessert. In spite of the order mixup, the service was very good. The environment was very calming with the relaxing music and dark foresty colours in...