Last night was our first date night since Camila, our second baby, was born. We decided to go to the Piedmont Springs, a hot tub place on, wouldn’t you know it?, Piedmont Avenue. We didn’t have much time for dinner before hand (we didn’t want to take advantage of our babysitters’ graciousness) so we decided to go to China Garlic, which is conveniently located right next door to Piedmont Springs. It wasn’t a good choice.
China Garden serves typical Chinese-American food at reasonable prices (about $7 for entrees). The portions are not very large, but that was fine with us as we weren’t planning on taking any leftovers home. Unfortunately the food just wasn’t very good – even when compared to similar restaurants.
Mike got the sesame chicken. It had a thick coating and a syrupy sauce that wasn’t quite sweet. The sesame seemed to be there for just decoration. In all, I can’t say we enjoyed this dish.
I went for the lemon chicken, as I was in the mood for something sweet. Once again, the coating on the chicken was too thick – almost as thick as the chicken itself. More problematic was the sauce, which was yellow and somewhat sour but didn’t taste at all like lemon.
The restaurant itself is small and characterless, just another Chinese dive. Service was fine and we did manage to get in and out in half an hour, which was our goal.
Next time we’re in the same situation, however, we’ll probably try the pizza place a couple of doors down.
China Garlic Restaurant
3941 Piedmont Ave
Oakland, CA
(510) 654-5033
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