Garden Restaurant Southampton — Restaurant in Southampton

After rading reviews we decided to visit this restaurant yesterday with big hope for trying proper, tasty chinese. Very nice atmosphere in the garden, that's for sure, but unfortunatelly thats the only 1 thing it was nice there.. various choice of food, even frog legs. We decided to try hot and sour soup and sizzling plates beef and chicken. After long wait for waiter (not very busy restaurant yesterday) we placed order and surprisingly soup arrived very fast, nice and very hot soup, but after couple minutes, when we were still eating soup the mains were brought- nothing what i would call "sizzling" beside the wooden board and sizzler hot plate-food was not looking as been sizzling. I left half bowl of soup( as didnt want the meal get cold- sitting in the outside garden), and the smell of chickrn made me feel sick. I tried slice of it and it tasted like pre cooked roast chicken or left over carvery far away of chinese sizzling freshly made chicken!!! 🤮My impression- i have never had as worse chinese meal, even ready meal from supermarket taste better! Im shocked that this restaurant is advertising with its awards, and serving precooked food?!Firstly, bringing crackers same time like soup, then couple min later, when customer still eating they bring mains, not even 5 min later! First sign food is not "freshly made for order". So dissapointed, i asked waiter about chicken and he confirmed is cooked earlier, as some people do not like raw one ( thats not me, i wont eat raw chicken but i expect it to be cooked fresh)! Hmm- everything around was chinese style, but never heard about using cooked carvery chicken in chinese kitchen in restaurant, thats for sure.maybe someone likes it, i use my leftovers too, but would not expect it from the restaurant having the food award, nor from chinese kitchen ( might be done in family home, but not in restaurant), and lack of service too( bring 2d plate when customer finish 1st). The worst chinese I have ever try!! Not reccommending and very...

Evening All, I just wanted to post and say a big thank you to the lovely owner of the Garden Restaurant for making us feel so welcome and the exceptional service (authentic Chinese cuisine ). It is the second time I have been to the Garden Restaurant.

The restaurant is under new ownership and the owner is worried about business going slow over the past couple of weeks, I will definitely be going back to support the business.

The food was excellent quality and choices, great portions at very good prices considering many places have increased costs and have restricted times you can have in a sitting. I would highly recommend trying the Garden Restaurant. It was was perfect, no rush, good service, lovely owner and delightful food. If you are planning an evening out for Christmas or New Year celebration without being rushed this is a great place, even though it is a little out of the way from the city restaurants, it was worthwhile.

Compared to last year the restaurant was pretty empty except for a lot of Just Eat and Deliveroo orders l. This was veshame for a small business and she told us how worried she is getting as business has dropped in the last few weeks as she isn't in town, she had sold up in London and now owns the Garden Restaurant. If you enjoy a good Chinese meal this is the place and value for money.

I missed my birthday meal on Saturday due to sickness and we cancelled she told me she makes cakes for a birthday/ anniversaries as a treat, as we have another birthday celebration we will definitely be going back on Saturday.

It's a little way from town but if you want a nice evening with a relaxed, friendly atmosphere I would definitely recommend supporting this...

We were totally disappointed with the bad services rendered by the waiter for our dinner yesterday.

We have dined in this restaurant on several occasions with our children and we have got used to ordering non-spicy soup noodles and foods for the children along with our spicy dishes. Unfortunately the two non-spicy soup noodles ordered yesterday turned up to be spicy which were completely different from the photos on the menu of which the soup of the noodle was white colour while the soup in the noodle they put on the table was red in colour with a layer of chilly oil. We informed the waiter for their mistake and requested to change the noodles to non-spicy same as that on the menu which we ordered in our last several occasions as the children cannot eat spicy foods.

The waiter declined our request and accentuated that food in this restaurant was Szechuan cuisine which should be spicy and the photos on the menu were just for reference only. During our conversations, he didn’t show his intention to communicate and emphasised he couldn’t understand Cantonese and insisted we had to speak Mandarin.

The waiter neither took any remedial actions nor did any management staff came out to solve the problem with the children’s dishes. We feel very disappointed as they did not and would not rectify their mistake with the children’s order and showed a very arrogant attitude towards their customers.

We will never choose this restaurant again, as there are many choices of Szechuan cuisine restaurant offering the same standards of food but with customer service far higher and where the customer comes first and their needs...