Yuan’s Garden Restaurant

Reviews

• Joy H.

  star star star star star_border 23 September 2026

  I'm nervous giving Yuan's Garden a high rating for fear of making this place too busy!! All silliness aside this is one of our must-eats whenever we come to BC! No where else can you get great tasting Peking Duck for a good deal!
  
  You get Peking Duck + a second order (soup or lettuce wraps -- both of which are great! The soup does take a long time to make however). We also get the Chef's special noodles which our kids love and pea sprouts! We've yet to have a bad dish but then again we're really only there for the duck! Quack quack!

• Eva L.

  star star star star star_border 11 September 2026

  PEKING DUCK TWO WAYS
  
  If you've never had this before, you need to go try it asap! The way to eat this is to wrap the meat, cucumber, onion and hoisin sauce all together in a crepe-like pancake. When you bite into it, you should be able to get that crispiness of the skin and the juiciness from the meat. It's a mouthful of goodness! The second way is usually lettuce wraps!
  
  Service (4/5): Good customer service and food comes out pretty fast!
  
  Environment (4/5): Kid friendly place. They have big and small tables. There's a FREE parking lot in front of the restaurant!
  
  Price (4/5): Quite reasonable prices!

• Ben Y.

  star star star star star_border 8 September 2026

  My family and I have been to Richmond many times, but always went to the same places, so we wanted to try something new. We landed on this spot, and I'm quite happy with the choice! This place makes pretty authentic versions of Shanghai and Jiangsu dishes for a really good price.
  
  We were actually quite lucky to get a table, as almost all of the tables were reserved that evening for large families coming out for a Sunday dinner.
  
  We ordered a lot for this meal, but most of them were small dishes. For cold dishes, we got smoked fish, jelly pork, and drunken chicken. We also got shengjian bao and xiaolong bao as they were popular here. For the main dishes, we got the classic lion's head and something called huotui jin bai, which was cabbage in a white sauce with some ham.
  
  Okay, I can acknowledge that a lot of these dishes don't sound... particularly appetizing. But don't stop reading, please! All of these dishes have something good about them, I swear.
  
  Let's start with the shengjian bao. The shengjian bao was a very solid bun. It was fresh off the pans and way too hot to eat at first, so hooray for fresh buns! The outside was extremely crispy, and the inside of the bun was nice and soft. The meat filling was pretty standard, good but nothing to write home about. It was EXTREMELY juicy, with it pouring out once you take a bite. For those who aren't familiar with this bao: LET IT COOL! You'll scorch your mouth if you don't! Don't let a hot bun ruin your day :(
  
  Have you been to Din Tai Fung? So you must've had their xiaolong bao, then! Yeaaa don't expect that here. This XLB is REALLY good, but it is in no way shape or form the XLB you would normally expect. Shanghainese XLBs are normally very delicate and small, with a very thin wrapper. This is not that kind of XLB. What you get, instead, is a thicker wrapper, almost like an actual dumpling, a larger sized bao, and a much fattier and heavier meat filling and soup. And that almost sounds like the opposite of a conventional XLB. But here's the thing. It works. Yes, it may be a bit off-putting at first, but the meatiness of the filling and the fattiness of the soup works so well with the vinegar dipping sauce. Please, give this version of XLB a try, it'll definitely open your eyes to how diverse Chinese food can be, even down to regional differences of the same dish!
  
  The cold dishes were all good. My favorite was the smoked fish. The smokiness of the fish mixed very well with the sweet sauce, and was quite balanced. There weren't that many bones in addition, so nice plus! The jelly pork took a bit of time for me to warm up to. At first, I thought, "This is just spam.", but eventually I started to get the appeal! The drunken chicken wasn't my thing, though. The wine taste was way too strong. On the contrary, though, my dad loved the chicken!
  
  Moving on, the lion's head. Oh, don't worry! It's not actually lion's head! It's a meatball. Erm, I mean, three FAT meatballs. They give a lot for this dish. The meatball isn't made of super finely minced meat, it's more chunky than a traditional meatball, and also has some vegetables in it. But does it really hit the spot! It soaks up the incredibly savory sauce like a sponge, and is just Chinese comfort food to the max. My parents loved this dish, and said that it was incredibly authentic to how it's normally made in China, so a big kudos for that!
  
  The cabbage was, surprisingly, really delicious! It was just a head of napa cabbage in a sauce, but it really worked. It was almost like a soup, with the broth being the weird, goopy translucent sauce. But I'll have to admit, I would order it again! It's really hard to describe the flavor, but it's just good please get it!
  
  This meal was only $65 once converted to USD, which is a ridiculously low price for the amount we got. While I do want to try other restaurants in Richmond, I wholeheartedly recommend checking this place out if you haven't!

• Tony J.

  star star star star star_border 6 September 2026

  Small Jiangsu/Shanghainese restaurant on Alexandra Rd. The staff and most of the clientele seem to be Cantonese. Pretty busy on a weeknight, although we did get a small table without a reservation.
  
  We got a pretty good variety of dishes for our meal. For appetizers, we got the Nanjing style salted duck and that was pretty good. Also got the jelly meat and that was decent. For the main dishes, the pan-cooked buns were excellent, and the steamed soup buns (xiaolongbao) were decent as well even though the skin was on the thicker side. I really liked their stir-fried ong choy, which had very good flavor. Got the roast duck tofu cilantro soup, sweet and sour ribs, and cured meat fried rice, and these were all pretty solid. I was pretty disappointed with the sweet and sour fried cod though. The fish was overcooked and dry.
  
  Entire bill was $135 before tips for three people, with one dish worth of leftovers. Would have been better if we didn't order the cod. Not cheap, but not too far off for restaurants of this class. Had enough good dishes to be above a 3-star rating, so I'll go with a 4.

• Jamie J.

  star star star star star 31 August 2026

  We started a new tradition in where we travel during Thanksgiving.  The last 2 years we traveled up the west coast.  Last year (or shall I say last last year, since I'm writing this review in May), we just went to Portland.  This year, we took it a step forward and went to Vancouver (flew to Seattle, drove to Vancouver, then drove back down to the Bay Area).  Well, we still wanted to have a nice dinner.  We looked around and found a place in Richmond, which is about 20 minutes away from
  Downtown Vancouver, which is where we were staying.  Because Thanksgiving in Canada is different than the US, of course this place was open on Thanksgiving day for the US.  
  
  The parking lot was crowded, and the spots were tight, but luckily someone left and I was able to find a spot.  We walked in and were seated at one of the big round tables for only 4 of us.  Looks like my reputation preceded me.  But, even though it was Thanksgiving, we didn't go all out like we normally do.  We went with some dumplings in the form of Xiao Long Bao (Steamed Soup Dumplings) and Shen Jian Bao (Pan Fried Soup Dumplings), Stir-fried String Beans, Hot And Spicy Garlic Crab, Salt And Pepper Fish, and Yang Chow fried rice.  The Xiao Long Bao was good and BIG.  Not like the ones we get at Din Tai Fung.  It's hard to find places that serve Shen Jian Bao, but luckily they sold them here and they were really good.  The string beans were good, too, but we really got those to load up on veggies, so we don't carb load with the fried rice.  The last 2 are the seafood dishes and were our favorites.  I loved the Salt and Pepper fish, but I think some of the coating might have been part MSG.  Personally, I don't have a problem with MSG, so not a big deal.  The crab was my wife's favorite.  I thought it was good, too, but I usually save the crab eating for eating at home, because it can get a little messy.  She went to town on it!
  
  By the end of the meal, we were more than satisfied.  We didn't miss the turkey, at all.  I did miss the pumpkin pie hidden under the whipped cream though.