CLOSED: 9/30/12
Cuisine: Chinese (Cantonese)
7726 Sawmill Rd, Dublin, OH 43017 (Old Sawmill Square Shopping Center) Mon – Closed, Tue-Sat 11am – 10pm Sun – 11am – 9pmKing’s Garden has been around for a while, but what caught our attention was an ownership change that shifted the restaurant’s focus from Beijing-style Chinese to Cantonese-style. The new owners have a long history of running solid Cantonese restaurants in Columbus; the husband used to own Shangri-La on Cleveland Ave., the wife’s family use to own Wong Gei on campus, and her brother runs Yau’s on south campus.
Our eating team dove right into menu and test-drove some classic Cantonese dishes.
Congee is rice cooked down with water at a very low temperature until it has a creamy consistency. This is usually served for breakfast and it cooked with different savory items like chicken, beef and etc. The version above is made with century/preserved eggs and pork. It was cooked to the right consistency and the subtle sweetness of the meat and congee was punctuated with the slight pungent taste of the century eggs.
The pickled vegetable with shredded pork noodle soup usually comes with rice vermicelli noodles but this version came with the heartier wonton egg noodles. It was very satisfying with its salty, porky broth.
This vegetable and pork noodle soup is different from the one above as this soup is thickened by eggs. The soup was velvety and the combination of the vegetables with the pork gave the dish a subtle umami taste.
The seafood pan fried noodle was a welcome change after all the soft texture of the previous dishes. The noodle is quickly deep fried and placed at the bottom of the plate to be covered in a wonderful soy/oyster corn-flour thickened sauce. The sauce will slightly soften the noodles but not completely so that you can have a wonderful combination of soft and crunchy texture.
Normally I would never order fried rice in in Columbus because it almost always comes out to be a soggy oily mess. King’s Garden’s fried rice is the exception. This salted fish with chicken fried rice was the epitome of wok hei and skill of the chef. Every single grain of rice was enveloped by the heat of the wok resulting in a non oily and flavor packed dish. I can now rest in fried rice/wok hei peace in Columbus.
If you enjoy tendons and brisket, the beef stew pan fried noodle is a must order. The tendons and brisket has been braised for hours turning them into buttery meat goodness and is a great companion to the pan fried wide rice noodles. If tendons are not your cup of tea, you can order either the beef stir fried noodle or beef rice noodle with black bean sauce.
We were all extremely happy with the quality of food and pleasant service. The only downside for most of us is that this place is not in our neighborhood. For those who live in Dublin, this place should be your go-to Cantonese restaurant.
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