Mandarin Garden — Restaurant in Lake Arrowhead

We just went here tonight for an early dinner for my birthday. It was pretty quiet. We had the crab Rangoons and vegetable egg rolls to start and hot and sour soup. Delicious! All of it, was absolutely delicious. Great start. Then my son ordered the honey walnut shrimp and I'm vegetarian so I asked what was good. He recommended a dish and I let him know my favorite things were eggplant and tofu (they didnt have a dish with that). He asked if I liked it spicy I said yes. He said ok. Our order comes back my sons food was delicious but mine came back with meat. He forgot to X the meat. BUT not more than 5 min later he brought out my piping HOT and delicious and apologized. He let us keep both dishes so I'll take the one with meat to my co-workers as my son doesn't eat tofu. But I appreciate them letting me still keep the dish. After the meal an incredibly pleasant young woman comes out and brings us the bill with cookies I gave her my card. She asks if I would like a song I said "how about a birthday song since it's my birthday today". She asked what kind of ice cream I wanted and offered me different choices I chose the coconut. She came back and sang me an impromptu birthday song. My son and I just moved up here and this was such a great start to our year. A wonderful visit to this little restaurant. If you get a chance stop by. The food was great. You can't go wrong when you sit down and they give you that hot green tea! I love that! Thank you guys we...

This was my first time visiting this restaurant and I have to say it was a pleasant surprise! We ordered Orange chicken, some sort of Beef that came with steamed rice, and beef lo mein. Everything was great and actually tasted authentic. The husband and wife put a lot of love into their business and interactions. Maggie actually sings for customers when requested and she is amazing. Having said all this I’ve seen a lot of reviews about pricing so let me break that down really fast our entire meal with a beer was $58.10. Now if you spent your life going to fast Chinese food places that fill out a styrofoam box for 15 bucks I understand your confusion. But each item we got rice included were all good quality and served on separate plates. Each plate fills a single styrofoam box on its own so that’s 3 $15 styrofoam boxes give or take if you consider the complexity of the dish and 1 box of rice. I don’t believe they’re overpriced I think people don’t understand the cost of portion sizing. I’m sure the menus in the pictures are outdated, I recommend inquiring about pricing if you’re concerned this place is out of budget. Long story short, I highly recommend this lovely family...

We ordered 2 A dinners and 2 B dinners. You pay per person ($20 and $24 respectively) and you get an egg roll, paper wrapped chicken and a beef skewer with a little ornamental metal crock and flame to cook them on. The kids enjoyed that and it was nice for the ambiance. There was a hot pot of jasmine tea and mein gon with sweet and sour and hot mustard. The soups came right away. We had the house egg flower with the A dinners and war wonton with the B dinners. We chose the Buddha feast, Mongolian beef, orange chicken, and bbq pork egg foo young. It came with fried rice and was served family style. The owner came out with a plate of soft roasted beef that had a ginger flavor and included it with no additional fee. We were pleased with the food and service. Derek was attentive to our drinks and helped clear the many plates to make room for new courses. There was quite a bit of food left over and we were offered boxes and took it to go. There aren't many choices on the mountain for different food (it's mostly America and Mexican restaurants up here) and we appreciated the ability to have any Asian fare without a long drive. We will visit...