Editor Pick
Garden View
- June 27, 2006
- Rated 4 of 5 by
grannola from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
We had been craving Chinese food for several days when we suddenly had an opportunity to go out for dinner. We immediately made plans to head to the Garden View.
We arrived just before 5pm and noticed that the patio was open. It was perfect patio weather so we asked if we could sit outside. The noise of the rush-hour traffic was a bit of a deterrent, so we were the only ones out there, but it was also quite early and the restaurant was by no means full.
The waitress brought a highchair out for the baby and several menus. They serve many common Chinese food items and have special sections on the menu with Canadian food, a kids menu, low carb, vegetarian and gluten free options. The whole menu is available on their website at http://www.gardenviewrestaurant.com/index.html
We skip the egg rolls for the most part (except the 8 year old) because they are Nova Scotia egg rolls and having grown up in a different province, they never taste quite right to us. They are fine by Nova Scotia standards though and only 99¢ each. Instead of ordering kids meals, we go family-style and order four dishes to share. We opted for chicken fried rice($6.59), chicken fried macaroni ($6.59), lemon chicken ($10.59), and almond chicken guy ding ($9). The kids had small drinks.
The waitress had suggested we try the house rice, which seems to be a collection of all the rice add-ins including chicken, beef, mushrooms, shrimp, and egg. She also said they could leave out any of those we didn't want. We decided to just go with our old standard instead.
The waitress also suggested we get chicken balls when we were looking for a fourth item, because she knew they were kid-favourites. When we said that the lemon chicken was really close to that she offered to bring some red chicken ball sauce for the kids. We decided that sounded like a good idea and the kids enjoyed it.
We really like the almond chicken guy ding. Mom and the kids love water chestnuts so they are very happy with this dish. I skip those but love the almonds. They are nice and crunchy and obviously toasted.
The fried macaroni was our "new dish" of the day. We always like to try something new at Chinese restaurants, and usually end up enjoying it. Definitely the case here. The macaroni was like a fried rice dish only with big pieces of vegetables and chicken mixed in. It has a fried rice flavour, but the texture was quite different. We would get this again.
At the end of the meal, the kids got a toy from the treasure chest. Nice that they did that even though we didn't order kids meals.
We finished off with out fortune cookies for dessert at home later.
We all had all the food we wanted and there was enough left for the 8 year old to have lunch the next day. And he didn't want to go there!
From journal Hanging out in Halifax