Orient Garden — Restaurant in Town of North Hempstead

So finally an authentic style Chinese restaurant opened in Nassau. Sure there are a few others, Plainview, Hicksville, but nothing in West Nassau county, especially an area known for dining such as Mineola (yes I'm partial, there's good people in mineola and Westbury). But to bring a flushing style restaurant onto the island takes balls. It's no easy feat!

First and foremost locals will be skeptical but excited to have something nearby rather than having to travel to Queens. Next the non-Asian locals may not be familiar with the authentic cuisine, just the American menu counterpart for which Orient Garden will be comparatively judged (which is unfair in case you haven't picked up on that). But they do have a menu just for that so fear not any of you afraid of authentic food.

So we ordered a few authentic and 1 non authentic dish which I will start with.

One in our party owners American fare Chinese cuisine and ordered chicken and broccoli. Now we did order in Chinese so they asked which kind of broccoli, Gai lan or regular to do we opted for regular for this individual. The chicken slices were plentiful, well cooked, the broccoli was spot on and most importantly the sauce was not full of oil but really good flavor.

We ordered an appetizer of salt and pepper squid, one of my favorites. It was good, they prepared it with a batter, although I prefer it dusted. For those unfamiliar with this is like Chinese calamari but with garlic and chili peppers instead of a dipping sauce

We also ordered Hong Kong style wonton soup. It was nice and simple, b wontons weren't those big hunking types, they were filled with pork and shrimp. The soup had gai lan in it.

Another main course was salty and pepper pork chop, which is a variation of peking pork chops but without the cheng du sauce. They were tender and properly fried.

Finally we got the lamb stew in 5 spice. Oh I love this dish. I love lamb. The lamb was tender and so were the bamboo shoots. It also had bean curd skins so this was a good dish for me.

The egg roll was pretty large and the ingredients tasted fresh. We also ordered sauteed pea shoots {dau miu}. Properly made, nice rich flavor with garlic.

I wish they had a better selection of tea but at least the out was fancy. The table is started with fried wonton skins and peanuts so be aware. They may be seafood centric so I'll have to return to find out. I hear the dim sum there is pretty good too. The place was more than half full and as the night goes on, more arrive so be aware the later you get there, you may have to wait.

The food is very good but done minor improvements can be made (dust the calamari instead of batter). I need to try the dim sum in order to elevate to 4 stars but I absolutely will.

The fish tank is always fun to see your food before ordering it. I want the king crab. I am looking forward to...

Terrible Experience at Orient Restaurant

⭐️☆☆☆☆

I recently hosted a Christmas Eve dinner at Orient Restaurant in New Hyde Park for 15 guests, and it was an absolute disaster. We dropped around $880, expecting a festive feast, but what we got was shockingly disappointing. The ambiance? It looked like a cheap Chinese takeout joint—definitely not what you want for a holiday celebration.

First off, most of the dishes were excessively salty, bordering on inedible. It felt like they were trying to mask the fact that the food wasn’t fresh. The seafood soup was a complete letdown—tasteless and bland, leaving us all wondering if we were even eating anything at all.

Then came the flounder. It arrived smelling and tasting so fishy that we couldn’t believe it was served in a restaurant. When we brought this to the owners’ attention, instead of an apology, they chose to argue with us! They outright denied that their fish was bad and refused to even taste it themselves. Talk about terrible customer service!

This experience has left a sour taste in our mouths—literally and figuratively. We will NEVER return to Orient Restaurant, and I strongly advise others to think twice before dining here. Save your money and find a place that actually values freshness and customer...

Dim sum on the 6th day of soft opening. Orient Garden shows promise. Not all items on menu card available. Flavors need to get bigger - the shrimp are good sized but clearly frozen, blandly seasoned. Lotus leaf chicken rice was dry. Puff Pastry Beef is a miss - IMO chef should pivot to curry beef puff? Tea is served tepid (though good steep); nice English style serving pots which did nothing at all to keep the 2nd tea serving hot. This is soft opening phase; management needs to work out quite a few logistics - getting order cards and tea on table on seating, having section captains to attend to table orders & clearing empty plates, setting up the dim sum carts for maximum efficiency (sauces, scissors, pens, etc). There are not enough experienced dim sum servers mentoring the newbies. Typical of Long Island restaurants, there are language challenges (Mandarin? Cantonese? English?) can be mitigated by stronger training. Parking is somewhat limited although availability expands if you dont mind walking a block or two. Decor is straightforward of a former diner. really neat globe/ galaxy themed ceiling lights. The woman's bathroom was not stocked for TP ( Early afternoon dim sum time) and the non-handicapped stall is a tight fit...