Country Garden — Restaurant in Peterborough

TLDR Bottom line: Fast, fresh, priced right, with friendly service and no MSG.

Important plus: No MSG in their food. I’m highly reactive to MSG and have never had a reaction from any of the dishes I’ve tried from this restaurant. I’ve been to this restaurant dozens of times over the years.

No MSG is going to mean that some of their dishes won’t have that generic Asian umami savoury flavour. Therefore, you may want to add a little soy sauce, hot sauce, salt, pepper, etc. to taste.

That said, I find their soups, their noodle, rice and stir fry dishes as well as the egg and pancake dishes to be very fresh, well prepared and tasty. I really haven’t sampled the deep fried “combo plate” side of their menu much, as I don’t like those anywhere, so couldn’t be very objective about them anyway.

We’ve never once waited longer than stated on the phone for a pick up order. Your food will take longer at peak times. Just like at the McFastFood drive thru. We’ve never tried their home delivery service. Can’t remember any significant screw ups on an order.

Is this the best Chinese food you’ll find in the world? No, of course not. For well-priced take-out, 10,000 miles from Hong Kong though, it is very good. Based on their performance and my expectations for a small take-out restaurant, I'd likely give them 4.5 stars if half stars were an option.

P.S. If you take the $25 paid cash free choice, go for the wings.. the other two choices aren’t...

So being born from Hong Kong and having grown up in Vancouver, B.C., I know what good chinese food is. Having moved to Sarnia, I also know what bad Chinese food is also. So having moved to Peterborough, I looked on Google for the best chinese food and found this restaurant. I had read the reviews and thought it would be worth my try, but I gotta say this has to be THE WORST CHINESE FOOD I HAVE EVER TASTED. The mapo tofu had no taste, it was watered down. The noodles we got with beef and vegetables were soggy and over done along with the beef that was completely over done so it is like chewing plastic. The complementary fried wanton that you get when you order more than 25$ was like eating fried flour cause the wanton part was so small that you couldn't taste it. I might as well have just eaten chips cause it would've tasted better. What angered me more was that this restaurant received a a prize for its food, 3 stars apparently. It was an insult to any Asian people who eat this food to consider this remotely good. Even my friends who are not ASian thought it was disgusting! Go order a pizza instead cause this place is not...

First and last time ever ordering here. We ordered a large hot and sour soup and three combination platters. When I called the order in they said it will be an hour to arrive. It was more like 2 hours. They called an hour in to say they didn’t have tofu for the hot and sour soup, I responded with no problem we will take it without the tofu. Long story short I ended up with won ton soup, that tasted not good. However I wouldn’t of got soup if I wasn’t getting what I asked for. The food all arrived cold. So I have a feeling that it sat in a window for quite sometime so that they could send the driver out with a ton of orders all at once. The rest of the cold food was average at best. I can have empathy for a busy restaurant but it would of been nice to know that an hour was an unrealistic estimate on time. I did call to complain and then was attacked by the girl on the phone. When i called back to talk to a manager, she refused to put the manager on the phone. I didnt call back to get my money back or anything but it would of been nice for them to run there operation a little...