Lan Garden 88

Let’s be honest, there aren’t many authentic Chinese/​Cantonese restaurants in this area of NJ and having lived in Boston, I feel deprived.
Nonetheless for NJ standards, I thought this place was good. Their portions were also big — family style big.
They cooked the sautéed snow pea shoot nicely and with good garlic flavor. The seafood fried rice was plentiful. The seafood pan fried noodles didn’t have quality or abundant seafood, but was pan fried the way it should be (I’ve had terrible pan fried noodles in NJ this far). I also enjoyed their fish and tofu in a clay pot.
I also appreciated the fruit they gave us at the end of the meal, I’m not sure if that was just because of Chinese New Year. Glad I can rely on coming here for my Chinese food fix.

The Chinese food was good. The restaurant was new and very clean. The service was slightly below average (the wait time for the food to come out is long and unbelievably slow). This is not the place if you are in a hurry. We ordered the dim sum combo appetizer plate, spring rolls, General Tso’s Chicken with white rice. The dim sum plate never came out but they were very apologetic. The overall experience was a very good one.

I can make this review very quick here.
I’m surprised they don’t serve crickets because there seems to be a lot of them. No customers, just crickets.
Pro: I purposely use singular adjective because cleanliness is the only pro. It’s relatively clean for a Chinese restaurant.
Cons: Everything else

This is my first 1 star ever to a restaurant, not because of the food and environment, but the service here, the waitress is really mean, and impolite, I went there with my friend, since I just had lunch, so I’m just waiting on him, then I asked the waitress for a glass of water, she said «you’re not eating, why do you want water» behind my back, well, not really behind my back since she’s so loud, this is not the first time that she’s that rude, can you believe she actually asked for tip after her bad service! I went to this place only because I had to wait my friend, I’ll never go to this place again, never again!

Was happy to see a dim sum place in northern NJ.
Went for the first time this pass week.
Beautiful décor.
There was a sign on the door that says dim sum chef on vaca, be back next week. Bummer
But we went in anyway.
There were a limited amount of dim sum to order. So we got the shrimp har gow, the ribs, tripes, and chicken claws. Very mediocre. But, I’m assuming these were brought in from another dim sum restaurant, and was just heated up for our order.
So we ordered some food from the dinner menu, I have to say, the rest of the food was quite good.
And their waitering staff is awesome. Everyone was super nice.
I would like to come back and try their real dim sum in the future.
If they’re as good as their dinner, I’m sure I’ll give it 5 stars.

Came here during early lunch. I can say this place improved a lot when I came during their soft opening. I really enjoy the seafood pan fried noodles.

Recommended! Authentic cantonese food offered. Nice and friendly staff. I was hestitated to try this restaurant after i read others’ reviews… However, we decided to give it a try given that Flushing is too far away… We liked the food and the environment. Ecerything came out right. Prices are a bit higher than Flushing, yet, compare to tha commute time we have saved, the price was fair. See picture.
Food are good.

The food seems genuinely Chinese and not the fast food fried crap, but finding the food you want to eat is a challenge as it seems everything on the menu is sold out. Off-​course it takes 15 minutes till the waiters find someone that speaks English to inform you that the dish you ordered is sold out. As I write this its my 25^th minute of waiting for anything on the table besides some peanuts and warm tea. Unlikely I will go here again or recommend to someone else, too bad as I really wanted to like this place.
Update 45 min later — wrong dish arrived.
Local paper reviewed it and gave it 1 and a half star. Pretty generous I’d say.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt the need to give a one star review and really like to support local restaurants. Restaurant was nice and clean, but the restaurant forgot to place our dim sum order for at least 15 dishes not once… but twice so we waited for maybe an hour and maybe 5 came out… eventually one by one. Apparently they forgot the first time and second time… Who knows? Spareribs dim sum tasted like cornstarch and dumplings had a nice dough but filling was very bland. The cooked dishes like the noodles and vegetables came out quickly and not bad but dim sum was a mess. Never apologized till we reminded them for the fifth or so time and everyone was already full on other dishes from the menu we ordered while we waited for so long. They gave us a 10% discount after we just decided to cancel all the remaining 10 dim sum dishes. This was nice but nobody seemed to react much or care until we canceled.
Don’t know what happened. Been here before and was much better last time. I hope this was not a usual occurrence but if it is, doesn’t justify the prices.

Ok. My original review is below. I have to update it after I saw the funny response from the business owner below, claiming that we «wanted 50% off our bill» because of the uncooked shrimp. This is just straight up lying. We never asked that or even thought of doing that. Although the rest of the meal is just mediocre, we were only holding you responsible for the uncooked dish.
Originally I thought this is a restaurant that doesn’t know how to cook its shrimp, then I thought it also doesn’t know how to handle a customer complaint, and now the lie. I guess that the waiter is making up the «50%» thing so he doesn’t get blamed. But as the restaurant owner you should know better.
Wish I can give a zero star. I can handle bad food but such busines practices are just not acceptable.
— — –
Not a good experience. The shrimp came out not cooked and smelly. But the worst part is when we told the waiter about the shrimp problem, he told us that «other guests have not complained about it today». Obviously he felt that can automatically prove that our shrimps are cooked. And then, he asked us «what do you want me to do with it?» According to the menu, the place tries to fight the perception that Chinese restaurants should be cheap. We are fine with paying more for better things, but you have to deliver. At least have a good attitude when your customers tell you what was wrong. Won’t come back.

So I’ve been wanting to try Lan Garden for a while now. They claim to be authentic but I think they bent the rules a little to cater to s greater demographic. I’m not saying that they’re losing any reputation by doing so, but I was truly looking forward to these flavors. The chicken with black bean sauce on a sizzling hot plate plate was the highlight of the evening without discarding the dumplings and seafood bean curd soup. Prices are a little high but portions are respectable and the cuisine is tasty. 3.5 if I could rate it that way. Yums!

As a chinese student, lan garden is really impressive! This is the real chinese cusine!!! Plz refuse those american chinese fast food. If u can afford, lan garden is the best choice.
作为一个中国留学生，我想说这里的菜色非常不错！在应季的时候，往往能够吃到比较价廉物美的中餐~五星好评！

It’s a family style restaurant. Big portion to share with others. A bit expensive. The waiter was nice and helpful in helping is decide what to get. The rice was good. The dim sum was okay. I like their décor and the bathroom was pretty clean. Nice place for a date night.

Back in the day when I was a kid, this restaurant was another Cantonese restaurant I used to go to all the time with my parents and it was definitely a walk down memory lane to return to the location. However, it definitely has been completely updated and the inside is completely different. Very nice and clean first off.
We were seated right away with a sheet to order dim sum from, instead of the carts that came around, which was fine by me.
The food was pretty good. I loved how big the shrimp dumplings were. I loved the BBQ pork steamed buns. It was my boyfriend’s first time trying dim sum and the BBQ pork buns were his favorite.
All of it came out steaming hot and tasted fresh. The food was amazing. There are so many options! Definitely want to return to try some of my other favorites.
The wait staff were pretty friendly and on top of their game. They all spoke Cantonese and English, which is great since I speak what I call Chinglish.
However, downfall, the prices. It is pricey here. I’m not used to paying for 5 orders of dim sum dishes at over $ 30. That averaged to $ 6 a plate. Eek. Ouch. We’re definitely not in Chinatown, Toto.
But hey, if you want decent dim sum in Bergen County, NJ instead of trekking over the bridge, this is the spot for it.

Came with no expectations, so I was quite impressed when I found a relatively clean Chinese restaurant with decent dimsum. It’s not as good as flushing or china town but this will do for now. While I prefer the cart/​trolley service yumcha experience, the quality of the dimsum is pretty good! I lived in Hong Kong for several years, so I have a good general sense of how it should taste.
Now the one thing that DID shock me was the size of the dim sum. I ordered the same number of dishes as I would in flushing (e.g., Asian Jewel), but the amount was at least double. We finished only half the food– not bc it was bad but it was just tooooo much food. No complaints here– brought it home and munched on it for a while.
The restaurant is clean and the tea is good. It’s just located in the middle of a highway, so it’s easy to miss the entrance (through Days Inn).
There’s plenty of parking spots. The service was good– they kept bringing us new plates and napkins and it was easy to grab any of the waiters’ attention.
I’ll definitely come back and try some abalone confer after seeing pics on here.
A good alternative to going to flushing and shelling out toll fees and driving for 45 mins in traffic!

I wish I can say that this place is good. But I really can’t. I also cannot say that it’s bad. It’s just really «a-​ok» type of American Chinese restaurant. There are not many places to get great Peking Duck in NJ around where I live so I had to give this place a try.
The peking duck is carved with meat and skin but they use thick white fluffy buns like that of normal pork bun type. This is where I would have to disagree with the chef’s choice. I like the traditional thin pancakes which does not take away from the taste of duck meat and crispy skin. These white buns are too much bread to enhance the good flavor.
I did try their string beans, shrimp lomein, seafood fried rice and beef chow fun which were pretty up to par with any other American Chinese restaurants but more pricey than take-​out joints.
So here is the verdict: Go if you are craving peking duck and does not want to drive too far, it’s BYOB but no hard liquor and no cork fee and if you like decent american style chinese menu.

I’ve had the dim sum here three times now and I will say it’s the «best» option for dim sum in the area. Granted, there is really no other dim sum place in Bergen county worth visiting. The place is new, modern and clean which I can’t say for most Chinese restaurants. They have lots of large tables making it good for groups.
Dim sum here is not wheeled around in carts but instead you are given an order sheet and you mark the items you want. They recently added more dim sum dishes to the menu.
Some items I liked:
–sticky rice wrapped in leaf
–taro basket dumplings
–pork dumplings
–shrimp noodle roll
–beef noodle roll
–scallion pancake (more like a bread)
–beef chow fun
Items not so good:
–turnip cake — extremely salty
–taro cake — just like turnip cake extremely salty, not sweet but savory
–shrimp balls or fish balls — husband found these very unappetizing
–congee with pumpkin and chestnuts — the pumpkin were these tiny little particles in the soup that had no flavor.
Make sure to drink lots of water otherwise you’ll feel like you’ve consumed way too much salt (or is it the msg?).
As far as service, the waiters here are slightly more attentive then your typical Chinese place. But beware of the manipulative waiter. He told us the dim sum can take 15 – 20 mins but any noodle dish like chow fun or lo mein can be ready very quickly. Since we were afraid we were going to starve, we ordered a beef chow fun. Within 5 minutes, the dim sum started coming out. The waiter tricked us into ordering the chow fun!
The prices here are higher then what we are used to but if you go with a large group it balances out.
Overall a decent place for dim sum for North Jersey.

Unilocal’s «Meh. I’ve experienced better.» for a 2 star is spot on for how I feel towards this place. Sub-​par at best. I think having a single type of tea for a dim sum restaurant had already set the tone for the meal.
The dim sum was «good for NJ» but the prices were so high that you might as well pay the $ 20 worth of tolls to go into Flushing. Sure, it’s convenient, but I also expect the quality to go along with the price tag. Dim sum here is a la carte and not on carts, which is fine but you’d think that the food would be better when it’s made-​to-​order.
The good: sesame balls and jumbo shrimp dumplings – the dumplings were actually really good
The okay: tripe, ribs w/​taro, chicken feet, shrimp in rice noodle, pan-​fried turnip cake
The bad: baked char siu bun (the inside was cold!!), baked custard bun ($$$ and not as good as cheap bakery buns), Chinese cruller in rice noodle (tasted like. nothing?)
If you’re in a bind and really needed dim sum in NJ for some reason, I’d maybe say go here… but if it were me I’d still make the drive to Flushing for the good stuff. This place was really really clean though so they got that going for them!

This is serious the most delicious dim-​sum I have ever had in most recent years. If they can keep maintain this standard, I will be their loyal customer for years.
90% of customers today are Chinese, and I heard most of tables close to us speak Cantonese, this is when you can ensure the food is authentic.
All of the foods I ordered today I absolutely love them. Simply delicious!
I would think the service will be the key for Lan Garden in order to be successful in the long run, right now, the service is just not that great.
Don’t get me wrong, the waiters are all very friendly and polite, it’s just very disorganized. I constantly saw the different waiters running around at different tables asking «did you order this? «and seemed completely clueless. I saw the table next to me looked quite frustrated because they’ve been waiting for food for over 30 minutes, and then there is another table arguing with their waitress that they didn’t order 2 pork dumplings but just 1… this is disaster!!!
I will visit again, hopefully the service can be improved when I return!

This is a fine dining Chinese restaurant so do not expect Chinatown style dim sum. Restaurant is very nice and clean. Servers are friendly and eager to please.
Dim sum is done a la carte (no cart service) with a paper menu which you tick off and hand to the server. A main menu is also available. Prices for dim sum range from $ 3.50-$ 7 so definitely pricey. But again, this is fine dining so the food was of better quality and less oily and salty compared to Chinatown.
The problem I have with this restaurant is that food comes out very slowly and one at a time. A dim sum meal took us about 2 hours so come here with good company and a bottle of wine.
They are currently BYOB while waiting for their liquor license to be approved. But they have a limit of 2 bottles per table.
I would come back but definitely keeping them for lazy Sundays when a 2 hour dim sum meal would not bother me so much. Hoping they can improve on this in the coming months.