Shanghai Tea Garden — Restaurant in Alaska

A bit dissapointed, order take about an hour. I don’t care about the wait, I’m used to Asian cooking where good food is prepared with time, but I was wrong with this restaurant. Dimsum was okay, the rest of the food , you’re better off somewhere else. Let’s start with house fried rice, took an hour. Only to be presented with a couple of chicken and a couple of shrimp, that’s it. Then there’s the orange chicken whose slices are bigger than a chicken tender, slices are as big as a fist, hard to eat with that size, sauce isn’t very unique in a good way. Beef dry pot and salt and pepper beef we also had the tofu ….still dissapointed. And all this took an hour, one food at a time. It was our first time, was excited, only to get dissapointed. Hardly touch the food, ended up just bringing it all home so not to waste. Pictures they have doesn’t equate what you get. I’ve gone to all the Chinese restaturant here in anchorage, I still find ORIENTAL Garden on my top list of good Chinese restaurant. Sorry but food taste and serving time I rank this on my bottom list amongst the Chinese restaurant here in anchorage. Your better off going across the street which is the PEKING WOK...

I had never been to the restaurant before. I was excited for dim sum. I placed an online to-go order. I arrived well after the pick up time to find they had not even started prepping the food.

The fact I had to wait 35 minutes honestly isn’t even the issue. The issue is: this place is incredibly dirty. The restaurant itself was completely cluttered with what looked like spoiled food in their fridge. One of the employees had their charging phone resting in the stack of to-go boxes. The same boxes they then grabbed to pack my food.

I honestly didn’t even want to eat any of the food once seeing the place and seeing a bacteria covered iPhone resting in to-go boxes.

Against my better judgment - I tried some of the dumplings. The sesame balls were saturated in oil. The “pan fried” buns were barely fried - just steamed. The rest of the stuff I sampled was honestly pretty gross- but maybe I was just totally turned off by actually seeing the conditions of the restaurant.

I...

I moved to the Sand Lake area recently, and have to admit I was completely reluctant to try this place. Hubby finally convinced me to give it a whirl, and I have to say I'm really glad I did. The place is clean, though there was an overwhelming fragrance of some kind - to me it smelled like a car freshener. I'm averse to fragrances of any kind, so that was a turn off, but the food was great. I ordered the Shanghai Chicken, hubby ordered the Shrimp Mona Mona. Both dishes were really great. My chicken had lots of fresh veggies, nice chunks of chicken breast (no gross gristly pieces) in a flavorful sauce. I thought the portion size was great - had lots to take home. Same for my hubby. Their egg drop soup was the best I've ever had. I ended up ordering more so I could bring it to work for lunch. Next up, I'm going to try some pizza. Hubby has already tried their Mongolian Beef Pizza and he LOVED it. Don't sell this place short - I think we've found a gem...