Monday, February 10, 2014

New Royal Garden Restaurant, Mt Waverley by Bureaucrat

Ah, takeaway!  Great for when you're feeling lazy, have nothing in the fridge or both.  On this occasion, I was feeling lazy, so went to one of our local Chinese restaurants for some T&A... hehehe.

If my memory serves me correct, New Royal Garden Restaurant used to be called something else (we're talking about at least 15 years ago).  When it was rebranded as New Royal Garden Restaurant, we all had a chuckle... I mean, a place is only new when it is new.  With the inevitable passage of time, it soon became not new, yet it still calls itself as new.  Back then, when it was new (are you following this?), we'd occasionally go there for yum cha and dinner, but over the years it's fallen off our list of regular places to visit.  

As it had been so long since I've last visited this place, I wasn't sure what dishes they are known for.  I know that in the past 12 months, Mother Hen and Mr Strong had gone there for dinner and didn't think much of it (not very tasty and over priced, was their view).  

The entrance is a bit hokey pokey and not the most pleasant to be - with chairs crammed against the large tanks of live seafood (full of glum looking fish and crab), splashes and pools of water from the fishies that were being caught, delivery boxes of stuff, stacks of the free Chinese newspapers, and the takeaway BBQ area.  Having placed our order, we waited in the entrance.

About 15 minutes later we got our order.  I was rather surprised to have our meal being presented in a rather smart-looking tote bag.  

When we got home, I was also pleasantly surprised at the bag of complementary prawn crackers.

Onto the food.  We ordered three dishes as we were feeling greedy and this would double as some left overs for the next day.  The best dish was one of their specials - braised, stuffed eggplant.  Thick slices of tender eggplant (no seeds, no chewy skin) with a generous filling of prawny-porkyness in the middle.  It had a lovely syrupy gravy made with plump black beans and was topped with lots spring onions.  I could easily only order this dish next time and have it with a big bowl of rice.

The next best dish was the beef with cashews.  This was okay - not bad but not great.  Lots of tenderised but bland beef, crunchy cashews and al dente vegs.

The least impressive dish was our order of $10 worth of char siu.  Salty, gristly and a whiff of MSG, is how I'd describe it  I didn't really eat this with our meal.  The next day, I cut it up into little pieces and made fried rice with it.

Verdict
Food - 7
Ambiance - 7
Service - 7
Price - 7

Overall
NRGR is okay.  While I don't have anything against the place, I'm not likely to go back there again (unless it's for the braised eggplant).  The serves are fairly generous and generally taste okay, but there's nothing exceptional about the food.  A stock standard suburban restaurant.

Address
New Royal Garden Restaurant
570 High St Rd 
Mt Waverley 3149
Telephone: 9886 1388

New Royal Garden on Urbanspoon

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

the stuffed eggplant looks very oly !

Bureaucrat said...

Hi Anonymous, it wasn't too oily (not more than other places), but at the same time, it's not the healthiest option!

Unknown said...

I had a terrible experience. We booked 2 tables with 20 ppl & they got our booking wrong & had us pencilled for a week later. They tried to turn us away but where else could such a large crowd go at no notice? So they squeezed us in and were v abrupt & rude to us for the remainder of the evening. Awful customer service when they were clearly in the wrong. Won't be going back

Bureaucrat said...

that sounds pretty bad. you can always test a restaurant's service when dining in a crowd. i've blacklisted places whether they don't reasonably try to accommodate larger groups.

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