Lei Garden (City Garden) — Restaurant in Hong Kong Island

Quick Summary: The menu and pictures on google map for this restaurant is out of date. The menu is now all in Chinese and there no pictures at all. If you want to eat dim sum dishes, go elsewhere.

The Review: Giving this restaurant 1 star out of 5. There was so many issues with this restaurant that affect my experience, I’m giving it a total score of 1 star. Here I’ll list what I experienced in this restaurant:

1. kinda hard to find this restaurant (and this is with the help of google map). It’s behind a park and stuck between other stores. And you have to go up a floor. There wasn’t any large sign. Afterward, I left from another exit and look back and finally saw the large sign. Really out of the way.

2. in the review and pictures on google map, I though this is a dim sum restaurant. Nope, not anymore. It’s a Chinese “fancy” restaurant. The menu is all about serving expensive food (like roast duck, shark fin, shrimp, lobsters, fish,etc instead of dim sum dishes, chicken feet, etc) costing anywhere from $50 to several hundreds per dish. (Must be under new management and they changed some stuff.)

3. in the review and pictures on google map, I see the menu has pictures of the food and it shown in both Chinese and English. Not anymore. The menu is all in Chinese and no picture whatsoever. Luckily, I got a translation app on my phone or I wouldn’t know what to order. (Must be under new management and they changed some stuff.)

4. I saw they had a meal set that has several dish costing $630 (see my attached photo). When translated, the name of the dish sounds delicious and with a high price of $630, I figured it’ll be worth my while so I ordered it. (I was with my brother at the time too so decided to treated ourselves nice with this expensive meal). Let say I feel rip off. Other than the soup that tasted heavenly, the rest wasn’t worth the high cost.

5. Their serving service suck. At first it was great. They serve the appetizers and then Soup, then the fish dish, followed by shrimp dish in a nice and orderly speed. Then there was a long wait before serving the steamed vegetables. And then there was another long wait. It got so bad, I had to wave to them. And when they came, they look at the receipt of food and ask if I already been served the shrimp dish. What the hell?? It seem they lost track of what they were serving us. I would understand if the next dish was a dish that takes a long time to cook. But it was a pork on rice dish. And when it finally arrived, it was chopped up small pieces of pork over steamed rice. So not difficult to make. Last item was a fruit and milk/yogurt dish as dessert (which came out quick). Overall, while the servers were kind, they suck on taking care of the needs of the customers.

6. when it came time to check out and I received the check, I found out there was extra charge I didn’t even know about (see my second attach photo). It seem they charge for my seating at the table (costing $30). Just know, they didn’t seat me in a private room nor at a special table. My brother and I was seated at a small table with other customers in a large dining room, containing other tables and chairs. As for the service charge, I can understand if it’s for the customers next to us. They order the roast duck dish and I saw them bring out a whole duck and they were slicing the meat off the bones and plating the duck meat. But for our meal, they just brought out the dish and put it on the table. There was no special cutting or serving needed. And somehow this cost me $129 hkd. (FYI, I paid the whole bill and didn’t make a scene even though it was ridiculous to charge me a serving and seating fees).

So, overall, did not have a good experience with this restaurant and I paid for overpriced food that I could easily get cheaply elsewhere. And was charge for things that either should be free or shouldn’t be charged at all. Which all combined to a 1 star rating.

P.S. I understand #2 and #3 is not the restaurant fault, but the whole reason I went there was for dim sum, not expensive...

Good attentive service (upon our request, the servers delivered the fresh shrimps as appetizers and only until we finished the shrimps then served the other hot dishes). Good quality food, reasonably priced (considering it's an upscale Cantonese restaurant with spacious seating). Unlike many Chinese restaurants, Lei Garden doesn't automatically provide you with 'appretizers' to rip you off. And it's very clean, no need to 'wash' dishes and bowls with boiled water, and no smelly wet floors leading to the toilets. We had fresh shrimps, grilled egg plant, and sizzling hotpot of goose feet - all...

Like a hidden gem as located in the middle of a large residential area and located on the 1/F with a small entrance at the ground level, with some stairs. Because of this, usually not packed, and thus the food and service in fact are better than similar ones of the same chain. As it is not a small restaurant, so space is also great and not crowded. Price is of medium range, but good for family or group gathering. In fact just 5 min walk from the...