China Garden — Restaurant in Omaha

EDIT: After finding a hair in my food (and reading the horror stories about people finding mouse poop, dead flies, plastic, and mysterious bones in their food) I checked the Douglas County Health Department website, and found that this place has the LOWEST POSSIBLE HEALTH RATING.

"Fair - The establishment barely meets minimum standards required by state and local food safety codes. Serious and minor sanitation deficiencies are found on each inspection. Sanitation deficiencies are not corrected on a routine basis and repeat inspections are often a necessary part of regulating these establishments to help assure minimum food safety conditions."

GROSS!

Ordered take out from China Garden tonight. Got home and found a long, disgusting, dark red hair in the almond chicken. Ok, fine, it happens. So I called the restaurant to let them know, and after putting me on hold for five minutes, they HANG UP on me. Really???

I called back. Now I was getting mad. I really just wanted them to refund my money so I could go order a pizza or something that didn't have hair in it. After explaining (again) what happened to a (different) employee, I was told I would have to bring the almond chicken BACK TO THE RESTAURANT if I wanted a refund. As I started to protest how ridiculous that was, the girl tells me -- I kid you not --- that they are "TOO BUSY TO DEAL WITH THIS RIGHT NOW," and HUNG. UP. AGAIN.

!!!

Now it's a matter of principal. These people hung up on me twice, and basically told me to go f myself. There is no way they are keeping my $27.

So I packed up the ENTIRE meal, drove ALL THE WAY BACK to the restaurant, GAVE THEM BACK the food. As I'm waiting for the manager, a delivery man came from the back and tried to grab my bag off the counter (it was sitting next to someone else's to go order). I explained this was not a to go order, this was my food that I was returning. He became very upset, started yelling at me in another language and waving his arms everywhere. You can't make this stuff up, folks.

Finally a teenage girl came up and processed the refund. This was the weirdest experience of my life, and I feel guilty for wasting so much time on it. But sometimes rude and awful people need to not get away with being rude and awful. I hope the health department shuts...

This place used to be great! Now not so much! Their menu is not only confusing but they are one of the most petty restaurants I have had to deal with! We ordered from them through an online delivery service and asked for extra soy sauce. Not a bottle of soy sauce but more than a few packages. I placed my order and then received notification that it would be an additional $4.38 so I go to see why and it's for soy sauce! Now 4 bucks is not much but for that I can buy an entire bottle or 2! So I had the service reach out to them and say we didn't want an unreasonable amount of soy just enough since we we're not at home and had no access to get some at the hospital we are in. They removed the charge and said the restaurant would send some soy sauce. We get our food and they literally did not put any in our order! When I had the service call back they told the representative that soy is not free!! Are you kidding me! Now that is petty!! On top of that we ordered from a menu that said everything on it was vegetarian. So titles like vegetarian Kung pao chicken, Vegetarian Hunan pork, Vegetarian Beef Chow Mein, ETC. The service we used to order through has been known to screw up descriptions or have misspelled words on their menus so we assumed this was the case! Well you know what happens when you assume... I understand that part is my fault for not clarifying but seriously! What vegetarian wants to eat an imitation version of the very thing that they most detest?? They are vegetarian because they do not want to eat meat!! So our food was terrible!! I will give it to the restaurant that the flavor of the dish was good however we just couldn't get past the spongy texture of the imitation meat! As you can see in the pictures included the pork looked like soggy Chow Mein noodles and the combination Chow Mein had something that was supposed to be shrimp but resembled squid and tasted like dirt! So beware when trying this restaurant that they are definitely a vegetarian place for the most part. If that is what you are looking for then I am sure you will be very happy here. My family however was very disappointed with this place and with the actions of the restaurant when we we're upset with being gouged...

Top 10% Omaha Reviewer. Follow me on here or Instagram @markthisplacedown for more reviews.

If my parents found out that it took me 7 years of living in Omaha before going to get some Hot Pot they’d disown me. Better late than never, right? I finally went last night and it was a wonderful experience!

WHAT I ORDERED Hot Pot.

Before starting you decide what base pot you’d want - Original (milder), Hot Spicy, or half & half (this is what we got). This will be what you cook your food in. The Hot Pot is ALL YOU CAN EAT so you can fill out a sheet of what you’d like to have (you can have as many refills as you want so pace yourself). Stuff like thin sliced beef, chicken, shrimp, tofu, enoki mushrooms, rice noodles, lotus root, baby boy choy are some of my favorites. We ordered everything which made for a massively satisfying dinner.

Tsing Tao - a must if you’re over 21.

MENU Besides the Hot Pot they also offer Korean BBQ (the cook it yourself kind too!) - I’ll be back for this one. If you aren’t into the cook-it-yourself experience they also have a large menu of the regular Chinese food items that you’re used to seeing.

For a full menu visit chinagardenomaha.com

VISITING CONDITIONS I came here with my friends around 6pm on a Thursday and it wasn’t very busy initially but got a little fuller as the night went on.

ESTABLISHMENT Not going to lie, I’ve been in this strip mall a few times and totally overlooked China Garden because I thought the outside looked sketchy. I’m totally kicking myself in the butt now knowing how fantastic this place is. The inside is fairly large (maybe 20 or so booths and tables). They also have a few TVs and giant projector screens (not on at the time). Hot Potting or Korean BBQing here for Sunday Night Football would be lit!

STAFF The staff was very nice and accommodating.

PRICING The Hot Pot was $27.99/person (all you can eat). The rest of the food items are $4-12 for appetizers and $8-16 for main dishes.

LOCATION 8441 W Center Rd, Omaha, NE 68124

If you want the authentic Hot Pot or Korean BBQ experience you can definitely MARK THIS PLACE DOWN...