Champa Garden

This place is good! If you can wait it out, go after lunch hours to avoid the long wait times — it makes it even more worth!
The fried rice balls (part of the Appetizer Platter) is to die for. It’s abnormally good. Think of it as lettuce wraps, but with some crunchy goodness. It’s just really good.
They ran out of flat noodles for the pad see ew (downside of coming in at a later time I guess), but had their pad thai and it was okay — nothing special. (I also don’t know why I got this in the first place)
The duck curry was good. It’s not a big serving, but enough for 2 – 3 people to share/​taste it. Little duck meat chunks, but the vegetables were good!
For two people, the three things above are enough (we also had leftovers to take home!). I’ll definitely be back to try the noodle soup.
++ appetizer sampler is a must-​have!!!

The music was very very loud. I cannot dine in there.
I called in for a take-​out. Got to the place :30 later and ended up waiting 20 min for food. The place was empty. Did they forget my order or they are always this way?
Kao poon was not that great. Very watery and bland. I was not impressed.
Street parking was tricky.
The service was ok.

Champa Garden is located in a residential area of Oakland, which is kind of strange but you can tell it’s worth making the drive out here because it’s packed with customers! A group of us went out to lunch here. We beat the rush but still had to wait for about 20 – 30 mins.
It’s a pretty small place that probably only seats a max of 35 people at a time. But the food here is pretty spot on and affordable! Larb gai, crispy pork belly, duck curry, champa sampler, and the pad see ew were what we ordered. I’d recommend all of them except the pork belly because it was a little too crispy and dry. It was cut too thinly and the fatty part wasn’t as juicy as I wanted it to be. Otherwise great experience!

My new favorite hole in the wall. I happened across this place on Unilocal and wow — a true gem! I grew up in Stockton and we would always get our papaya salad from the Cambodian aunties at the park. The papaya salad here, Lao style, is the closet I’ve ever been able to find. Plus it has Japanese eggplants that just add the perfect funky crunch punch!
The sampler plate deserves an award. It’s tastes like a tour of SE Asia on a plate. I’m not going to even try to explain its awesomeness, other than to say, you will not be disappointed at the beautiful variety of flavors!
I’ve brought friends, out of towers, basically anyone that loves Asian food and the place gets a unanimous thumbs up for culinary excellence in a non pretentious, who cares if my food smells like fish sauce, feels like I’m eating at home kind of vibe.
The minor downers — service can be slow but they’re trying so be patient. On my last visit the women’s restroom was out of order and the men’s had (toilet?) water all over the floor. I forgive them these inadequacies as I come to eat, not pee.
I love u Champa Garden!

Finally tried Champa Gardens! We got a table for 4 around 8pm on a Friday night after only a 15-​minute wait. That was lucky though… this place usually has people spilling out the doors waiting for a seat.
You should go family style here. Each dish was around $ 10. Food was good with a wide selection. The Champa Sampler came in a little boat and had some spring rolls, Lao sausage, and lettuce leaves we didn’t really use. An eggplant with tofu dish was decent but not very flavorful. The panang curry was my favorite – an orange curry with carrots, bamboo, tofu (or meat, they’ll tofuize most of their menu), and some other veggies, all over brown rice. Tasty, but nothing out of this world. Nothing I’ll recall as uniquely from this restaurant.
Service was a little slow but always super super friendly (and that’s what counts in my book!). 2 simple but clean restrooms.
I’ll definitely be back to try more things and hopefully bump this to 4 stars, but I’ll probably wait for another slow night.

FOOD:
My favorite thai spot in the bay area! I’ve been coming to this restaurant ever since it was first open. The food and quality is absolutely amazing however I feel like the portions get smaller and smaller every single time! You must get the rice ball salad and thai tea when coming here! I’m pretty loyal to champa garden when it comes to thai food.
PARKING:
Residential neighborhood! Only street parking so it can be challenging!

I love the food here! The Champa sampler is a must get! I came here with my friends on a Sunday and we had to wait about an hour for a party of 6. Wait is expected because this is a small restaurant and it is really popular. So make sure to get here early and write your name of the clipboard. We were all hungry and ordered a bunch of food. We ordered:
–2 x Champa sampler (because it was sooo good)
–Tom kha gai (large)
–Duck curry with eggplant
–Shrimp and pineapple in claypot
–Pad kee mao with beef
–vegetable dish (forgot the name)
–brown rice, jasmine rice, and sticky rice
Everything came out so fast and all at the same time. We did not waste no time and started grubbing immediately. Everything tasted good and nothing was overly salty or bland. This is probably one of my favorite restaurants because everything taste so good and is so affordable. Our bill ended up to be a little over $ 100 including tax and tip. Such a good deal for all this food and everyone left satisfied. This is definitely a place to go if you are craving Thai/​Laos food!

Champa Garden is one of the best and most legit Southeast Asian restaurants around. This is my go to for lunch or dinner whenever I’m in the area. My favorite dishes are the pineapple fried rice, duck curry, Lao sausage and salads (larb and papaya). I would recommend getting the sticky rice. Gosh, just writing this review is making my stomach growl!

Arrived on a wet Monday night and the crowd was minimal, but how come our service was mediocre at best?
My friend and I wanted to try out Champa Garden since it is so highly reviewed and raved, plus I never had Laotian cuisine. so my tastebuds wanted to see what the hype was about. When you first walk in, the interior provides a cozy and warm environment. Perfect for grubbing on some good food! Though it took a while for someone to seat us and even longer to order our food.
Food for the most part was mediocre-​good. Nothing screamed amazing to me, but they were decent. I’ll start with the worst and go to the best.
— Pork Belly with Chinese Broccoli: It was the special that night, but unfortunately it wasn’t so special to me. Felt like a dish I could easily make, but for the most part it was mainly just drenched in soy sauce, garlic, and oil.
— Duck Curry with Eggplant: This seems to be a favorite among Unilocalers, but for my friend, he didn’t like the combo. Felt it was too fatty with something so creamy like curry and I agree. Overall, I thought the curry itself was good and the flavors were perfect for a cold night.
— Champa Sampler: MY FAVORITE DISH! Felt like I got a «sample» of all the flavors of Lao. What made it pretty good was getting those lettuce wrap and dipping it into the tangy & spicy fish sauce. Sooo good and if I had to come back, this one would be the dish I would get.
DO (last name) TIP: Save your yourself a few bucks and go on
to buy a coupon, they usually have pretty good deals and makes the overall meal pretty cheap.

Lets go to Champa Garden!
Tip: You can actually order food and eat at the bar, since they can have a long wait sometimes.
Angel wings, just do it. — Stuffed chicken wings, what kind of voodoo is this?
The restaurant was pretty affordable and the food was really authentic. I ordered the angel wings, the champa fried rice, and laos noodle soup. The wings were bomb, the noodle soup had oddly slimy noodles, but were really good and different from any other types of noodle soup I’ve had before (phở, ramen, etc…). The fried rice was not my favorite dish, it sort of tasted like thai fried rice, but less spicy and the rice was really compacted together and didn’t really have a lot of flavor to it.
The staff were awesome because they were attentive and I’m impressed with how many people were working that night given the small size of the restaurant, which probably allowed them to serve more people and provide better service. (Good move for the owner, especially helps to maintain the quality of service the restaurant provides)
Overall this place is a winner.

2x times in one week? I never do that!
I’m not sure if my profile represents it but i’m a huge lover of Asian Food. Despite «Asian food» being a huge generalization, I think it’s safe to say that I like it all.
I was first introduced to Champa Garden through a friend after we explored the hills of Oakland. In fact, I actually thought she was referring to the Champa Garden in Fremont but I was told (by one of the employees) that they aren’t affiliated with that one.
To be honest, I would classify Champa Garden as one of those super hyped up restaurants in the Bay Area. However, I must say that they can deliver. Upon arriving to the address, you’ll notice that the area is very suburban and you’ll be parking on the sidewalks where locals would otherwise park their commuter vehicles.
The interior however is definitely one that you’d see in a restaurant. It’s nicely decorated with soft lighting to provide a cozy dining experience. They have a small bar upfront with tall stools and numerous tables (some oddly bunched up) around the seating area.
PSA: The bar is available to dine if you request it. However, a bunch of people were sitting there when I arrived for dinner, but as people were seated, I sat down and asked if they serve people at the bar and the answer was yes. Save yourself some time and eat here if you have a small party of 2 or 3.
Let’s talk about food. You MUST get the Kao Paik (Chicken noodle soup). I mean, how good can it get, but my god, you can’t go wrong with this! I also tried the Champa Sampler (very flavorful, I just wish the lettuce were bigger or I had more), Angel Wings (stuffed chicken wings), and the Champa fried rice (not bad but wasn’t amazing).
Also props to the employees for being so friendly when they actually notice you! (not being sarcastic, they’re so busy here)

Near Lake Merrit and 8^th in Oakland and wondering where to eat? Laotian food probably never came to mind. But once you try Chompa Garden you’ll have a hankering for that spicy savory curry or crispy spring rolls.
New Year’s Day and some of our favorite places were either closed for the day or closing early. One place near Lake Merrit actually shut down for the day because their lone waiter was a no show! Which takes us to Champa which means «Flower» in Laotian. It was open and filled with people waiting for a table in their small entryway. At least six groups were ahead of us, but before I coul Unilocal an alternative restaurant our name was called.
Service — Quick and efficient as our water glasses were refilled and our food was brought promptly. The staff was whipping in and out of the kitchen and bringing out food quickly. I mistakingly read their intensity as aloof and robotic. However, when I stopped the wait staff and asked them a question like «what in the world does Champa mean?», they would smile and laugh and take the time to answer with surprising eloquence. I wish our entire meal were filled with smiles and fun banter with the wait staff because it makes for a whole different atmosphere in the restaurant. Family owned and many of the workers were related.
Appetizer Sampler — a surprisingly large assortment of crunchy spring rolls, spicy Lao sausage, noodles, and crunchy rice. Actually makes for a good entrée for one.
Shrimp Clay Pot with Red Curry — delicious red curry with a creamy coconut flavor throughout. Decent amount of shrimp and chunks of bell pepper and carrots. This was a table favorite.
House Special — Battered and fried catfish with eggplant in a house sauce. This dish had a kick to it and though the catfish was cooked perfectly, the batter was a bit heavy and over-​powering. The biggest pieces of catfish were best because they had the best fish: batter ratio.
Green chicken curry — tasty green curry sauce with thin slices of white meat chicken and chunks of bell pepper. Again a delicious and well balanced curry, though the chicken was a bit overcooked and dry and tough.
Dessert — pineapple ice cream with fried bananas. So deliciously rich and decadent. The large serving of 8 large banana chunks had a just a light drizzle of honey, and the ice cream was full and rich with a hint of pineapple and coconut.
Overal, a delicious meal and if I return I’ll try to beat the crowds of young 30 something locals. I’ll also try to engage the wait staff from the get go, or at least get them to smile.

I want to believe in some restaurants when they have such high reviews, but everyone’s experience is different. My friend said I would like this place since it has good reviews, but this time even she said it has gone downhill.
This restaurant is located on a corner in the middle of a residential area which can be hard to find. The wait is long, usually 45−11÷2 hours from what people were saying. We had a 45 minute wait. Small tables and very slow service. Had to flag the waiter many times just to order.
The angel wings were about $ 8 for two pieces of overbattered dry wings with not much filling.
The wide noodles my girlfriend ordered were so spicy she couldn’t eat them, and when I tried it, I couldn’t eat it either. Tasted like a lot of white pepper. My order was very disappointing. The sticky rice was dry and the duck curry was filled with fat and a lot of bamboo shoots.
They forgot my Thai Tea and my friends beer so we said forget it. The waiter also took a long time to get us boxes and the check and so people were mad because they were waiting for our table but we told the people that it is not our fault we asked the waiter many times for the check.

Service could be better, but the place was busy and the food is what matters most, so four stars is my rating. I’m Laotian, so I know what authentic Lao food tastes like and this place is spot on. I loved the papaya salad. It’s so rare to find a restaurant that will make it in a way that’s not americanized with some legit spice! I prefer Lao style over Thai style because it has more of an umami flavor due to the fish sauce, and it is less sweet with no peanuts. At Champa Garden, they give you the option to have it how you like and will cater to your taste in heat levels too. We also had the duck curry which was delicious, and the pad kee mao which is like spicy drunken noodles that were very good.

A mixture of thai and laotian food experience. As you can see 5 stars, a hole in wall place. It was a busy lunch hour but we waited 5 mins for our table. Service was excellent. The food came out quick. But not too quick where it’s not fresh oh no it was delicious! I wanted to get pad kee mao (drunken noodle) but they ran out of the fat noodles. womp womp. Now I’ll just have to come back to try it! But we got lots of appetizers to share and I tried my first thai tea sake! I would describe it as drinking melted rainbow shave ice from hawaii. Lol.

Love Love LOVE this place! I’ve been here multiple times already and they are consistently delicious every time! Also, if your company has perks/​discounts at this place or
deals, be sure to use it! $ 15 off your entire meal if you spend over $ 50. :)
I absolutely love their Papaya Salad thai style here. It’s the most authentic I’ve ever had. It’s very spicy, sour from the lime, but sweet at the same time. The fish sauce is amazing. My second most favorite is their Champa Sampler because I love those DIY lettuce wraps! Their duck curry here is so good too. If you have it with sticky rice or coconut rice, it’s perfect!
It gets very busy here on the weekend nights, so plan to arrive around 6:30pm or later than 8:30pm! Otherwise, expect to wait between 30 mins to an hour. The food is definitely worth the wait though!

My review for Champa Garden I’m sure will come as a surprise to many. It’s a beloved restaurant in this neighborhood in Oakland, I’ve even heard testimonials as being the best food in town. But from my experience visiting for lunch last Saturday I can’t give them a passing grade.
We arrived around noon-​ish on Saturday and all the tables were full so we signed the sign-​in paper and waited about 20 minutes or so for a table to open up. We ordered a few entrees:
Beef Salad: I’ll start with the good. This is a simple dish of beef served on top of lettuce, tomato, and cucumber, along with a special sauce. I thought this dish was simple and good.
Duck Curry: this is a tasty red curry with a combination of duck, eggplant, etc. This was my favorite dish and would order again if I ever come back.
Pad See Ew: a really poor tasting version. It was like a day old chow fun they tried to re-​steam. Not good at all.
House Special Catfish: disappointing. I had high hopes for fried catfish in a special sauce but it was lackluster.
The service:
This is where they failed miserably. The food came out at all different times. So none of the four people in our party could eat together. The Beef salad which came last arrived about 45 minutes after the Pad See Ew which is unacceptable. On top of that, I don’t expect everyone to speak English, in fact my grandma didn’t speak English but the language barrier between us and the waiter was just to great. It was like the Tower of Babel, we were looking at each other trying to read each other’s minds because the words I was speaking weren’t registering.
Here’s the kicker and why I won’t return. When the rice was brought to our table to go with my curry, the bowl had live ants with the rice. I don’t know about y’all but I like my rice ANT-​FREE. It went from eating at Champa Garden to Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. I wish I had a can of Raid at that point.
So I pray that everyone else’s experience will be different. But for me there are too many other good and better restaurants in the Bay Area to spend my money for good food and quality service than to come back to Champa Garden.

Smack dab in the middle of Oakland’s eery neighborhood, you’ll find this hole in the wall joint. A friend recommended this spot for authentic thai cuisines as we were looking for a place to eat dinner. Since it’s in a neighborhood area, parking is only found on the street. There’s a steep hill right by it that I would be scared to park at though since I’m a horrible parallel parker even on hills. We managed to find parking nearby and walked across to put our name down.
We arrived about half an hour before closing. Surprisingly around 830 it was still quite busy. Our wait time was almost 30 minutes. While we waited we were able to place our order ahead of time so that way when we were seated, the food wouldn’t take that long.
As always, when you’re hungry you order with your eyes and we sure outdid ourselves with the amount of food that was coming out for just the 4 of us. We ordered the following:
–Appetizer Sampler (fried tofu spring rolls, nam kaow, and lao sausage)
–Thai Style Papaya Salad
–Champa’s Fried Rice
–Garlic Prawns
–Won Ton Soup with Shrimp
–Pan Fried noodles with Chicken
–Fried Banana with coconut ice cream
I think we could of done without the appetizer sampler because the only that was good from there was the spring rolls, everything else we didn’t really care for. The Champa’s fried rice was too strong in taste that it wasn’t worth getting for us. We stuck with the sticky rice that was offered to us. Everything else was on point! So delicious and flavorful. The thai style papaya salad was really spicy but good so recommended for those that can tolerate a spicy salad.
Overall, a great place for authentic thai food and prices are really reasonably affordable for the amount of portions they gave. Service was quick and friendly. Great choice if you’re in this neck of the woods.

So good. I can’t believe I didn’t come here when I lived in the Bay. Shame on my 25 year-​old self. Shame. Shame.
Came here with my cousins for lunch on a Saturday. I’m gonna warn you now– this place is hoodie. I definitely wouldn’t come here for dinner. Intrigued? You should come for lunch. We came here right when it opened, and as the lunch hour funneled in, so did the guests.
We ordered the following:
–lao sausages: plump. The casing had a nice snap to it. There was a slight spice to it, but it didn’t overwhelm the sausage. So good.
–laotian papaya salad: it’s the heavy on the fish sauce and bold in spice. I really enjoyed this dish, but if you’re kinda of iffy of pungent flavors, you probably shouldn’t order this.
–fried rice balls: this is essentially fried rice, mixed with ground up beef, seasoned with a ton of flavor + spice and served with lettuce leaves. You wrap the fried rice balls/​salad into the leaves and douse it with dipping sauce. This by far was my favorite dish. It was so aromatic and flavorful. Again, order this.
–pumpkin curry: chicken. pumpkin. veggies. Oh so good. The pumpkin was cooked until it was tender and it soaked up all of the flavors of the curry sauce. This was surprisingly really good. Pour the curry sauce over your rice and you have a good thing going.
We also order the fish house special which came with filet fish morsels and simmered along with eggplant. This was also incredibly good.
I honestly think the entire menu at Champa Garden is delicious. Despite all of the press and notarity they’ve gained throughout the years (good for them), they’re still very loyal their flavors. It’s, in no way, compromised, and I appreciate that. Thank you Champa for keeping it 100.

This place is a flavor bomb!!!
The Champa Sample is a must-​order. It includes Laos spicy sausages, vermicelli noodles, mushroom + silver noodle egg rolls, and fried rice ball salad with fish sauce on the side!
I love ordering the most exotic sounding dishes on the menu when I try out a new cuisine. I’ve never had Laos before, but the flavor palette seems close to Vietnamese and Thai. Naturally, the fried rice ball salad caught my eye. What on earth is a fried rice ball salad?! It’s crispy goodness, including fried rice (OMG A SALAD WITH CARBS?! HELL YES!) mixed with preserved pork, green onions, peanuts, cilantro, mint leaves, and lime juice.
We also got the angel wings, which can be best described as a spring roll wrapped inside a deboned chicken drumstick. Drizzle some of that sweet and sour sauce on top and you got a ticket straight to deep fried heaven!
The mango fried rice was also delightful. My boyfriend is usually staunchly a noodle guy, but even he caved to this magical dish.
The Laos-​style beef larb was not as pungent and flavorful as I would have hoped, but it was still delicious.
Service and atmosphere was mediocore. The staff seemed on the unfriendly and on the shy side, but nothing horrible. For such a cozy establishment, I think it goes a long way for customers to be greeted with a big smile and at least some level of enthusiasm.