Peking Garden — Restaurant in Braselton

Decided to try this place based on what other people had for their feedback. The pros and cons are as follows:

Pros: This place was open on Christmas Day, the lady at the counter was super nice and courteous, and from what I ordered the two dishes that were delicious and stood out were the orange beef and basil fried rice. The portion sizes were standard for what you'd expect from a restaurant, so I have no idea why other reviews said the portions were small.

Cons: The amount of cornstarch they use to thicken their dishes is out of control. My favorite Chinese dish is Shrimp W/Lobster Sauce, but here the sauce which should have been like egg drop soup with shrimp and mixed vegetables was literally just water mixed with tons of cornstarch. It tasted like a soupy flavorless melted slime with a little egg. The plus side to it was that they did include big pieces of shrimp.

The Thai curry dish and Thai chicken soup were no better. The curry had a base of water mixed with cornstarch, which tasted flavorless compared to normal red chicken curry from any other Thai restaurant. The soup which supposedly is lemongrass soup had zero lemongrass flavor and once again tasted like water mixed with cornstarch, albeit less cornstarch than the other dishes. Never in my life have I ever had Thai food that tasted like water or nothing at all, except for this place. I get it, times are tough and restaurants have to cut corners to survive post-pandemic to save money, but a note to the owners is that if you want repeat customers to keep buying from you, cut back on the cornstarch and stop making the food tasteless.

I will try again in the future just because the service was good and hoping they change their recipes...

My roomate always orders from here but I've heard mixed reviews about the place so I haven't tried it til now. I gave it 2 tries at least before writing this review. If you want GOOD food worth the price, DO NOT go here. One day I ordered the Pepper steak with onion (lunch) and the steak was clearly old, the whole dish was bland I had to put so much Sriracha on it just to try and have some kind of taste. Second time I ordered the Shrimp with Lobster Sauce (lunch) and they gave me three pieces of shrimp, the rice was cooked with two much water so it has the consistency of mush. The egg drop soup was bland as heck. As well as the vegetables they put in the dish themselves were clearly frozen veggies they defrosted - not even all the way - and just threw in there that way it looked more traditional instead of cooking it with the sauce to help defrost and add flavor to the veggies. Waste of $9 each time for lunch. Never again....

This one needs an asterisk.

The first time I ordered from here, I ordered the General Tso's chicken. I will not order that again, as it is not like any other Chinese food establishment. It was bland and didn't even have the right sauce.

The next time, I ordered Szechuan chicken, beef with vegetables, and vegetable low mein. All good. Though I don't normally get Szechuan style anywhere else, so I can't compare it to anywhere else.

The last time I ordered Szechuan chicken and vegetable chow mein. Apparently, this is the only chow mein that doesn't come with noodles. It was basically a vegetable stew. They "made it right" by giving us vegetable low mein, but I was disappointed that I had to drive back up there.

To sum it up, some menu items are good, some are bad. Make sure you look for pictures on the menu before you order so that you aren't...