Ling Garden Restaurant — Restaurant in Portland

A short while back, I called Ling Garden asking if I could upgrade my lunch special soup to wonton. I was told I could not but they would sell me wonton for $3 rather than $4.50 if I bought a lunch special. I went their yesterday ready to order a lunch so asked again reminding her that most Chinese restaurants allow off menu upgrades for a price just to make sure the price was still the same. I was told it would be the full $4.50 and different restaurants do things differently. Since there were other customers, I felt too embarrassed to haggle further over $1.50 so I just left.

I sure do miss New York City Chinese restaurants where most usually do just about anything off menu for a reasonable price increase as well as usually considerably lower overall prices despite vastly higher operating costs than Portland. The few NYC transplant restaurants to Portland that were also like that seemed to disappear.

After reading some of the one star reviews for Ling Garden when I went back home, I feel like I just dodged a bullet. The complaints are mostly about undercooked and bland tasting food, but there were a few food poisoning complaints and even one about being told "they were being too picky" for wanting to order what they always did after driving in from the western suburbs.

Perhaps I should not act like a typical entitled transplant that expects businesses to make reasonable efforts to satisfy customers rather than adapt to the local culture of customers being obligated to make every mediocre or worse business feel as special as the hottest new nightclub in the world's most desirable cities. Ling Garden will take my loss as a win that preserves its cultural vibe and might even comment to discourage other would be customers with similar foreign customer service and product quality expectations from...

We’ve had food from here twice. First time, had it delivered. We had Sesame Beef, Egg Foo Yung, and General Tsaos Chicken. We all though it was fabulous and plentiful! Huge portions! Last night, my husband and I dined in. I had sesame beef again and while delicious, I was disappointed that the meat was much tougher and over cooked than the first time. My husband ordered the Tropical Chicken. This one really stumped us. The menu doesn’t give a good description of what you’re getting, so imagine our surprise when the chicken came with bell peppers, spinach, and mushrooms? What’s tropical about this? The sauce wasn’t even sweet, it was just soy flavored. It was good, just not anything like we were expecting. We wondered if there was maybe a mistake made. Also we were given these teeny bowls of rice, which wasn’t even enough for the large amount of leftovers we brought home. I blame myself for not asking if we could get a little more to take home. I will say that the Lychee Martini gets a million stars because damm, they are soooo good! If they weren’t $11 a pop I would have drank twenty of them. So, overall, give the place a try because it’s mostly excellent food, just perhaps a little inconsistent. We will go back ourselves, because the food is good enough to...

TL;DR: Not worth it.

Well, yet another time I wish I could do half stars because this would be more of a 3.5 than 3 stars. We ordered takeout on Friday night through Postmates and picked up the food ourselves, total cost was $42.

The people are SUPER nice and the establishment is very clean and aesthetic. It would have a been a lovely place to sit down and eat at.

We ordered chicken lo mein with no veggies, chicken lo mein with veggies (regular), and the General Tso chicken. Overall, the food was just meh. Both versions of the lo mein were kind of flavorless. The chicken was cooked really well but it just didn't have much flavor. I added soy sauce and that helped, but still wasn't worth the price. The General Tso chicken was served over a bed of broccoli and that was the only flavor we got the from that chicken.

Sadly I don't think we will be back. I wish the food had some sort of flavor but overall it was just plain tasting chicken and noodles, except for the raw taste...