Orchid — Restaurant in Town of Hempstead

Disastrous Service & Poor Management – Avoid This Place!

We went to Orchid Restaurant in Garden City for my mother’s birthday dinner with a 6 PM reservation. Our party included five little girls (all under 9) and an infant less than 6 months old—so naturally, we expected to be accommodated promptly, especially in a packed restaurant where young children can become restless. Unfortunately, that was far from the case. • 6:00 PM: We were seated. • 6:30 PM: No one had even approached our table. • 6:45 PM: We finally got drinks and some chips after waiting 45 minutes—just for a simple snack. • 7:00 PM: We placed our food order. • 8:00 PM: After two full hours of sitting there, the appetizers finally arrived. By this time, the kids were understandably hungry and difficult to keep entertained. • 8:30 PM: Entrees were finally served—but only after we had to chase down staff for refills on drinks.

At this point, it was clear that the owner/manager had no interest in providing good service—only in making as much money as possible. He crammed as many people as possible into the restaurant all at once, overloading the kitchen and servers with no regard for their ability to actually handle the volume. He even opened his catering space to seat an additional 50 people with only ONE server assigned to the entire room.

This wasn’t an oversight or a busy night gone wrong—this was a deliberate money grab. The manager didn’t care that service was abysmal. He was more focused on packing the restaurant than ensuring a decent dining experience for his guests.

Also, before you even consider eating here, do yourself a favor and check their health inspection report. You can easily find it by searching “Orchid Restaurant Garden City health report” online.

This restaurant has been around for 40 years, but based on how it’s run, I have no idea how. If you enjoy waiting two hours for mediocre Chinese food and being treated like an afterthought, then this is your place. Otherwise, skip it and order takeout from literally anywhere else.

I will never step foot in this...

OK, I tried this place on a recommendation after telling a friend. I cannot get any good Chinese food on Long Island. When you walk into this place if you go through the front, you have to walk down the stairs it’s a pretty dated place. We just went for lunch and I simply got the general TSO‘s chicken. It came with a soup or eggroll and roast pork fried rice. The egg drop soup that I got was delicious the entrée though it came out with not one piece of broccoli on the plate. It was just the chicken and they were small pieces that were crispy but dry. And then I mention there wasn’t one piece of broccoli on the plate. The roast pork, fried rice, hands down the worst I’ve ever had. And I’ve had bad from takeout places. It was just mushy. It was overcooked and mushy. I never put prices Or size portions in any reviews but just a heads up their lunch special was probably five or six dollars more than the usual Chinese restaurant lunch special and as I looked at their entrées for dinner, they were definitely on the high side. really just another very mediocre...

The General Tsos chickens was all dark meat. It should say that on the menu for $28 especially since most people have a preference and the dish is usually white meat at restaurants. Apparently you can order a white meat version (if you ask; not on menu) which they did switch for us, but the white meat version does not have the same crunchy batter and you wind up with thinly battered soggy pieces. The Orchid Duck is supposedly marinated for 24 hours but the Duck and the brown sauce it comes in had very little taste.

I gave 2 stars because of the ambiance and decor which is nice but unfortunately, we did not like our food. Server was nowhere to be found after we got our food initially and after 10 minutes, I grabbed one of the other waiters who switched out the General Tsos and even after I received the replacement food, 20 minutes after the initial dish came out, we STILL had not seen our waiter. I was halfway done eating the white meat version by the time we finally saw him. Need to do...