Grace Garden

Another amazing dinner of a variety of spectacular food. Will always consider this place the go to for authentic Chinese food. Thank you!

I have had both the Seafood with XO sauce and the mapo dofu and thought they were superb. The service was fine. Ambiance is not really what GG is about.

Dining facility — Small size dining room with 6 round tables for 1 – 8 people and averagely clean.
Food — A wide variety on the menu. Food was fairly good, I ordered the beef and broccoli combination dinner plate (pic below). Real generous portions. A lot of variety on the menu to choose possibly next time.
Service & Staff — Not to so personable but attentive.
GRADE — B

You know how Anthony Bourdain travels the world in search of the greatest food experiences in the world? Well you don’t have to do all that. Right here in the region you can have wonderful experiences like that of Grace Garden. Located in a hole in the wall location in a strip mall in some small town is this gem. The reviews says it all — try the fish noodles. Try the chive blossoms. Everything is fresh, delicious, and writing this review makes me want more.
Do not try the Ma Po Tofu. I am a big fan of this dish but this is not the place you want to try that dish.
I am excited to come back and try some of the dishes that you must order days in advance like the tea smoked chicken and some of their seafood dishes.
Fresh and exciting. I am ecstatic to have been able to try this wonderful restaurant.

This is probably the best Chinese restaurant in the Washington area. I’ve been eating here for over a decade and it has never disappointed!

The food was pretty good. I had the chicken curry dinner combo. It comes with an egg roll and won ton soup. The egg roll was a 2 out of 5. Too much wrapper and not enough inside. The soup was a 4 out of 5. Very good! Not too salty and HUGE won tons. The curry WOULD HAVE been a 4 out of 5 but the rice was pretty bland. The leftovers were much better. HUGE portions!!! Great prices! Parking was pretty limited. I had to park in the back of the building. I will return.

I think this place is a little over hyped. But if you consider the available Chinese cuisine in the immediate area, it’s understandable. Yes, they do serve real Chinese food. So if you’re looking for some authentic style place nearby and this place is convenient, then it’s probably worth it for you. Prices are decent. Food is decent, but if you’re used to real Chinese then it’s average. If not, then you’ll probably think it’s pretty good.
/​/​LOCATION\\ It’s on the same strip of shops as the Cluck-​U and Bangkok Kitchen, next to the KFC. There’s parking in the back, just turn at the entrance road of the liquor store or the road next to the tattoo parlor. You can park in the back and go in through the laundromat’s long corridor. By the time you think to yourself you misread my directions, you’ll eventually reach the side door for Grace Garden.
/​/​STAFF\\ Overall, I’m ambivalent over their food. I mainly don’t like the service. I found the lady behind the counter pretty chatty, nosy even. Some people will probably like that and find it friendly, but she was too familiar for my liking.
/​/​VIBE\\ Like all the other establishments in this plaza, it’s all about the hole-​in-​the-​wall charm. It’s not very big, it only has a few tables. There’s nothing fancy about it, if anything it looks a little tired. So if that’s your kind of thing, you’ll like it. If you want fancy table settings, don’t come here.

I didn’t even finish my food.
ALl the talk I heard about this place. I was super super super super super super super disappointed.
I had super high expectations from the reviews of others and photos… I mean, everyone on Fort Meade talks about how great this place is… and the food was greasy.
And the place looks dirty.
So moral of the story— Dirty, greasy and I wont be back.

We have family in the Laurel area and it’s always been tough to find a decent Chinese restaurant. Ended up here based on a recommendation from a friend. We tried the pork chops, deep fried eggplant, and General T SO chicken and all were flavorful.
Will definitely come back to try some other dishes. Only gripe, don’t let your wife or daughter come here at night by themselves to pick up or dine in. Kinda shady area with a liquor store and Cluck U Chicken next door. Nothing good happens at a Cluck U after 10PM.

I don’t know what everybody be is talking about, this was the first time I ordered from here and all I could taste was the char from the rice and chicken being burnt, it tasted like charcoal with a side of General Tso’s chicken and rice. Apparently you have to be Chinese to be given good food.

This fantastic restaurant looks unassuming from the outside, but inside, the food is fantastic. The Szechuan favorites are plentiful — fish filet, crispy eggplant, spicy beef, XO chicken. Dishes come out as they are ready, steaming hot and fresh from the wok. The spicy Szechuan beef with leeks and peppers melted in my mouth, and the XO chicken was perfectly charred and chock full of vegetables. Feels like you’re eating at a family’s home. (Don’t judge this place on the décor.)
I would highly suggest coming with a crowd to order many dishes to share on the tables’ lazy Susan’s. This mom and pop shop is one of Maryland’s best kept secret!

This ha been my favorite place for Chinese years. Ask for the authentic Chinese menu. My favorites are the fish noodles (of course), Szechuan fish filets, and Taiwanese Style Fish. Ask for the vegetables of the day if you’re looking for something green. The green vegetables are not on the menu because they use whatever looks in the market that day. My favorites are chive blossoms and Bok choy.
If you have some time, order the tea smoked duck three days in advance. It’s worth it.
On the American menu, try the chicken wings. Chef marinates them before frying. The coating is crispy and the meat is flavorful. The wings do take a little longer to cook, so be patient.
Be advised that they are closed on Sunday. Chef is the only cook so if he’s not cooking, they aren’t open.
Grace Garden is worth the trip.

Everything we ate here was amazing! We ordered the crispy eggplant, ma po tofu, pocket tofu, spicy garlic eggplant and the Dan Dan noodles. The pocket tofu was surprising and delicious. The Dan Dan noodles were perfectly cooked with an aromatic gravy. She gave us sweet Chinese donuts (similar to round tiny churros) to finish the meal — they were soft and lightly coated with sugar. We thought we were ordering a single piece but an order gets you a whole plate of these. We managed to finish all of it. The meal was well worth the 25 mins drive to get there. We are planning to return on a more regular basis.
Update: in subsequent visits, I’ve tried to convince the old gentleman who runs this restaurant to open a branch in Baltimore. And, that I’d even be open to helping him find investors. But he remarked that he likes his laid back lifestyle. Good thing that they’re only a short drive away!

Hey! Authentic Chinese! First and foremost, put down the paper (Americanized Chinese) menu. Ok – I’ll admit I ordered a cup of egg drop soup because it was a chilly day.
This is very much a hole in the wall kind of place. It didn’t feel dirty, but just lackluster in the decoration department. I didn’t come for the ambiance so it didn’t bother me, but my boyfriend remarked on it after we ate. They DO have pictures of most of the dishes on the walls.
Dishes are communal size. We shared the szechuan spicy beef and a chicken dish. The name is eluding me but it blew me away. We also got the seasonal vegetable of bok choy. My favorite. They gave us a huge bowl of rice as well. We each had enough to eat of all dishes and plenty to bring home. It was just as good the second day which is my true mark of good Chinese food.
We caved and got the fresh donuts to go. About 30 little sugary coated hot, fluffy delicious puffs. Oh they were simple but good.
Our total was around $ 50. We will be back.

I drove 75 minutes to go to this restaurant to eat. The fish noodle was the only really good dish this restaurant had. The pocket tofu had dobajain sauce on it and that was basically it. They did not cook it especially different other than tofu and a bottle of sauce. The crispy eggplant was okay. It was deep fried with an sweet brown sauce. Basically the only thing that was really good that we ordered was the fish noodle.
Service — The service at this restaurant was awful. The first time we went there were 2 people in my group who spoke Cantonese, so they humored us. We had to go to the counter to order our food and the two Cantonese people had to go to the counter to ask for everything including tea. The second time we went there, we might as well have been invisible because they seated us by the door and it was freezing cold. It took them 1 hour to get us jasmine tea which was hot water sprinkled with a few pieces of tea remnants. The food took a long time to come. I guess if you want to get service you have to bring someone with you that spoke Cantonese.
Basically, this restaurant wasn’t worth driving 75 minutes to get to unless you were dying for the fish noodle. It wasn’t very authentically chinese. The rest of the dishes was mediocre and didn’t take very much imagination to make or cook.
The food gets 2 stars. The Service gets zero stars.

I’m always very skeptical when reading reviews with one or two stars among many other testimonies that describe how great the product is. Well, I never thought I find myself on the side of this type of minority until I visited the Grace Garden.
I selected the restaurant based on ratings and number of reviews. Four of five stars among 191 reviews? Very impressive! We ordered several courses so that everyone could have a taste of good Chinese. Well, what a disaster! The food must have been bought frozen from a wholesaler. Any chicken courses tasted and looked pretty much the same. Although sesame seeds on Sesame Chicken made the dish most distinctive, essentially, the only difference between the courses was noticeable in muddy sauces that tasted slightly different from each other.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t have a problem with frozen food. I buy frozen Chinese from Trader’s Joe and don’t complain. In fact it is pretty decent. However, the Trader’s Joe sauces have pretty decent taste and while I cook myself, I can ensure that the food is not dry fried. This was the main problem with the Grace Garden. It looks like the restaurant developed a new cooking style. While the food was fried to the point that there wasn’t any taste of meat, the served vegetables were almost raw.
Well, take my review for whatever is worth if you can even find it among the 191 votes, the majority of which praises this establishment. Also, keep in mind that, I guess, if not the fact that I was caught by surprise I could have give this place almost two stars. (I wonder who are the people that are «split between giving this place a 4 or 5»?!)

I was not at all impressed. Sorry. Maybe I should have listened to previous reviews talking about stay away from the Western Menu and try their specialty cuisine. I gave three stars solely based on the meal I ordered. The service was nice. The cashier/​hostess was friendly and encouraged us (my wife and I) to try their cuisine, but I was dead set on having General Tso’s and my wife ordered the Orange Chicken. The food was bland. Nothing, literally nothing, had flavor. Not even the fried rice. The egg roll didn’t even have much flavor.
I recommend you give this place a try to form your own opinion. It was my first time and maybe I stopped by at a bad time because the people there seemed to be enjoying their meals.

We ordered takeout when we moved in to our new home. I frantically searched for a close proximity Chinese joint and this place popped up with great reviews. Kind of tricky to get to… it’s in a strip mall very close to the main road, so you have to be careful not to miss it! It’s by the KFC!
To be honest I wasn’t completely crazy about the area/​convenience of popping in and out. When I came in there were a few tables taken but this place is definitely more of a take out place.
We got the General Tso’s and the Chicken and Mixed Vegetables. I am allergic to gluten and MSG and the only sauce they had for me was soy. so I can’t really say mine was the best Chinese food I ever had but we loved the fried rice, and the General Tso’s was top notch according to the fiancé.
Prices were reasonable, and everyone seems to LOVE this place so I’d say give it a whirl.

It’s really hard to find authentic Chinese food in Baltimore, but Grace Garden is probably the closest you’ll get. My friends and I usually order the braised pork belly with mui choy, which melts in your mouth, and the crispy eggplant. Even my eggplant hater friends love that dish. Fried thinly sliced eggplant, glazed in a sweet sauce. It’s hard to dislike it. One of my personal favorites is the braised tofu, hakka style, which is tofu stuffed with ground meat, shrimp, shitake mushrooms and chinese sausage.
It’s a small space, so sometimes we call ahead to make reservations. Might be a trek for some, but well worth it.

Let’s start of with a story. It was one of those days where I was tired and just ready to get home from work. Unfortunately I had nothing prepared at home and I was not in the mood to cook. I remembered I had this place bookmarked as I was leaving Fort Meade and it was a good move to stop here as it took me over 30 minutes just to get off base.
If you drive to fast you will miss this place. It is located near Cluck U and there are a few places to park on the street but more parking is in the rear.
The first thing I noticed walking in is the wall covered in awards such as Zagat and various best of. The place is typical of many Chinese restaurants in being small but a few seats and tables in case you want to take a load off or eat with some comrades.
I ordered the combination lo mein and general tsos. It was pretty good and it must have been because if I ever get a taste for some Chinese food again this will be my first place of choice in the Odenton area. I have tried a few places in this area and I will say their food is better than the popular Hunan Rose up the street. You will enjoy the food if you get that itch for some Chinese.