Garland Bistro

good food, good veggie options with decent portions. needs some help in the service department though — additional servers would make it more efficient

Delicious every time and a fantastic cozy atmosphere with great service!

Simply the best. Try the fruit bowl; varied and fresh and very pretty to look at.

Loved the place and food was amazing. Service was quick. We had the Roadrunner and Huevoe ranchero for brunch, it was classic. Clean place, good original Mexican food, quick service with affordable prices– how can you go wrong with this combination?

This place is a diamond in the rough. A wonderful blend of cuisine with a vast array of vegetarian options. Breakfast is wonderful and if you feel adventurous ask for the mashed potatoes instead of the standard home fries. Delicious beverages top off a beautifully designed menu. We ate on the back patio and it was nice, if just a little noisy.

A fantastic family owned restaurant. Great quality food, the ingredients are always fresh no matter whether it’s the western pancake or their Asian dishes. I usually ordered the southwestern omelette that’s filled with avocados and comes with a cup of freshly cut fruits. The coffee is fresh and good. The restaurant is nice and clean. This is definitely one of the best kept secret in Tucson!

CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN This can be hard to come by in Tucson.
I enjoyed the breakfast and loved the pancakes! I usually don’t care for pancakes but these wholegrain pancakes were awesome!
This place is not if you are looking for a good old-​fashioned Midwestern omelette. I think they don’t exist in Tucson. For new American breakfast items, Yum! This place is good. I have only had breakfast here and cannot comment on lunch or dinner but I feel optimistic about trying it.
Enjoy

Nice, clean, well-​prepared food. Great service. Excellent vegetarian options even though the menu was cut down recently. Delicious carrot cake and cookies.

Bad. I went with a large group and no one enjoyed their meals. Everything was flavorless and soggy. I’m pretty easy to please when it comes to food and this place was simply not good. Maybe they were having an off day but I wouldn’t go back.

Fresh food, good service & decent prices. The omlette was pretty good (ask for the salsa) & their salads are amazing. Very fresh.

Eclectic fare would be the most apt description of the food at the Garland Bistro. The best of everything. High quality ingredients that are expertly prepared. Delicious too.
Scads of vegetarian and non-​vegetarian choice. Asian and other ethnic dishes, American Classics, and even Italian dishes with a twist, such as Wild Mushroom and Spinach Lasagna.
Wonderful breakfast choices too with more fresh and delicious offerings than I have seen anywhere. Such as three types of pancakes, Whole Wheat, Blue Corn and Buttermilk and eight kinds of waffles. Creative omelettes too.
If you can’t find anything on this menu that you’ll like, you don’t deserve to eat.

I didn’t know that The Garland had changed owners, now has a vegetarian & Vietnamese focus to the menu, which is all over the place — nothing resembling their old menu. Noting that no one else was in the restaurant at 11:15am on Saturday sent off some warning bells — but, some folks were on patio. Clean, well-​lit, nice décor, smelled good. I had the #20 breakfast (ham, eggs, home fries, toast) — ham slab was very thick and the saltiest thing I’ve eaten in years. Eggs and home fries were good. A single piece of toast (who does that!?!) cut in half. My cost with coffee was $ 10 — very pricey, not worth it! Laverna’s was too far away for my schedule, otherwise I would have gone there for really great breakfast food. Probably won’t be backto Garland Bistro for breakfast — maybe for lunch. Curry and brown rice sounded good.

«The Garland» takes family owned and operated to extreme levels, it’s on Speedway.
I am a big fan of their soups and I do the Vietnamese Pha Chicken Soup, again. My better half almost always orders the Vegetable Curry with brown rice. You should note that the Garland’s menu is not limited to «Vietnamese» only cuisine. They offer a wide variety of dishes including some sandwiches.
Rating B+
4 stars out of 5
We always drop in for lunch and they have a pretty interesting menu which includes curries and a variety of good choices for Vegetarian. Not that vegetarian is a pre requisite for us to be happy with a place. Just thought you veg heads might like to know of another good choice. Meat eaters, this place is for you to.
The Garland is in an old converted house and has a little court yard out front. It’s a little bit run down (quaint?), but clean and comfortable. I think breakfast is their passion as their special board always has additional specials for the breakfast crowd. Although I can’t comment on the entire menu, other than to say, of the limited items I’ve eaten there and always for lunch, everything I have ever ordered has been just about perfectly delicious. ON this visit I ordered my usual, Pha soup with Thai Basil. It’s a clean broth with rice noodles and a healthy portion of sliced chicken breast. It arrives with a fresh mound of Thai Basil, crunchy bean sprouts and two little sauces on the side, one of which will turn your Pha soup into a blazing inferno of spicy deliciousness. Me like it spicy hot but note that you can forego the heat and create your soup in the image you love most. I start with ripping up a ton of Basil and getting the leaf oils going which means when I eat my first few spoonfuls I like to let the basil completely and playfully take over the hot broth. I’m not kidding, savory doesn’t know from savory until you’ve tried fresh basil in the hot broth. Then about ten spoonfuls in, I can’t stand it anymore, and in goes the hot stuff sauce. It’s like having two different bowls of soup and by the end I’m usually in blissful but mild spicy pain. It’s a large portion and all I need to fill me up for lunch.
We are both hooked on our respective meals at this place. Ali almost always orders the Curry Vegetables with Brown rice on the side. Ali? How was it? I didn’t know I liked curry until I tried this dish, and now I can’t order anything else. It’s rich and bold, with cinnamon undertones that you can’t stop eating long after you are full. I get it with tofu, which sops up that delicious golden sauce and balances perfectly with a nutty brown rice. It comes with a side salad that I can never find room for. I highly recommend it. Hey it the male side of the review back again and I want to point out that Ali doesn’t love string beans, and those are among the many vegetables in her curry bowl. I always get a couple bites of her Tofu if I behave myself during the meal.
If there is a drawback to the Garland, it would be the service. The family tends to try to do it all themselves which means that when they get busy, their typically marginally ok service starts getting really slow when it comes to the little things like refills, questions about the food, and your check. I’m pretty sure that most Tucsonians know about the Garland and probably aren’t surprised by this favorable review. If you haven’t tried or forget about them, this is a reminder that you need to treat yourself and go to the Garland.
I highly recommend the Garland! The only reason it gets 4 out of 5 is the service issue but for food this uniquely good, I can wait.
They are open for Breakfast, lunch, and Dinner and closed on Tuesdays. They have a limited beer and wine list. I consider them to be affordable and medium priced.
A for Effort
B for Ambiance
B for Service
A+ for the food taste
A+ for the presentation
AAA for not somehow screwing it up
I make this place one of my top picks for lunch and they have something I crave. Ah Pha! I’ll be honest, even though they have alcohol, I’m not likely to think of this place as a pick for a «romantic night of fine dining and drinks.»

About fifteen years ago, the Garland was a fairly good restaurant. Its decline has been slow and painful but, after the last change in owners, it has taken a scary nose-​dive. If a restaurant known for its breakfast is crypt-​quiet at 9:00 AM, something is wrong. If it’s so empty that you can’t find staff – even in the kitchen – something is more than wrong. We should have made a quick exit, but laziness is a powerful force.
We tried the breakfast burrito and the huevos rancheros. Metallic tasting rojo sauce was the best part of the rancheros while the burrito had less charm than a tube of construction paper dipped in Elmer’s Glue. Their spice rack must be empty aside from a shaker of MSG, some plastic flakes, and an old bottle of soy sauce. An honest description of the meal would be unnecessarily cruel. Let’s keep it simple: don’t go. Really. Don’t. There are a lot of other, cheaper mistakes you can make in this short life.
In all fairness, the old couple running the place are nice… I’m sure they’d make adorable grandparents but, dear lord, don’t ever let them cook for you.

Where to begin… I really expected more from Garland. This place could really pack them in with some fundamental changes in service. We went over on a Friday evening because there was live music by an acoustic guitarist. This was pleasant and we enjoyed the music. Pass.
Upon entering the dining room I noticed the lights were very bright. Ambiance was left to die on the empty outdoor patio. Fail.
We ordered a cup of coffee, a lemonade, the soup of the day, a vegetable chowder, mushroom and spinach lasagna and the tofu curry. The food was alright. The chowder was kinda watery for a «chowder». Eh.
The lasagna was very good. Pass.
The curry, which I ordered to illustrate to my date that tofu is not always bland when prepared well, did not at all illustrate this. So, while it was very good, the tofu tasted very much like tofu and not the sauce that it was in.
Our water came in plastic cups. Fail. The coffee cup was never refilled. We were never offered more coffee. Fail. There was no silverware on the table and we had to seek it out for ourselves. Fail. The lemonade was warm. Fail.
The server/​owner only cleared dishes in order to give us the check while we were still eating our dinner. We did not ask for the check. FAIL. Really, we were no where near done and it was no where near closing time. We got there at 6:30pm and paid at 7:26pm.
We were never offered desert. Fail.
The knob on the bathroom door was broken and there was no alternative way to lock it. Fail.
I would tell you how much the items were but our check consisted of a scrap of register tape with a number on it $ 32 and change.
We were one of five parties in the house the whole time we were there. How this place is still open is beyond me.

Average food. I guess with their high prices I expected a little more creativity. They have a hodgepodge menu with sushi, Vietnamese food, Italian, like I said a little bit of everything. I really liked the ambiance (restaurant is in a converted house) and the wait staff was very friendly.

NOT A STRICTLY VEGGIE PLACE. It’s our new favorite!
Plenty of meat on the menu. Serve breakfast and lunch until 3:00, then close until 5:00 when they open for dinner.
HUGE MENU, similar to the Blue Willow but much better.
Peaceful ambiance. Great wait staff.
Family owned and operated.
CLOSED ON TUESDAYS only.

Many good choices for vegetarians but not everything that says veggie is really vegetarian. I orderd a noodle dish and it had chicken stock. Yikes! For the most part, very good food. I highly suggest the tofu spring rolls, yummy!

Had a superb weekend brunch. Four vegetarians ate quite well. Especially like the home fries. Great staff too. I recommend it.

(+) good vegetarian options, simple, fresh
(-) nothing stands out, nothing special