Deer Garden

Deer Garden is a Chinese restaurant that specializes in noodles in soup and it was my sister who introduced this place to my family and I. The concept of their noodle soups is the same as Cattle Cafe (review here), where you have the option to choose the broth, noodle and toppings to your liking. The nice thing about Deer Garden is that you can just mark your choices on a piece of paper and hand it to the waiter.

I picked the Korean Style Sweet Potatoes Crystal Noodle in Szechuan Spicy Soup with  Specialty Pork Sausages and Sliced Deep Fried Fish Cake. The noodles were nice and chewy and I find that fish cake usually goes well with any noodle soups. I was disappointed by the specialty pork sausage because it was just a regular hot dog, rather than the Taiwanese style pork sausage I had been expecting.

As for the soup, after a couple of bites, it became way too spicy for me. It was so bad that I barely ate half the bowl before I gave up in defeat (I wasn't even full from the noodles but rather from finishing my drink entirely). My sister did mention that she did not remember the soup being as spicy as mine when she had tried it previously so I could have just been unlucky. However, after that painful experience, it's safe to say that I won't be ordering that soup base again in the future.

Luckily, I ordered the Lychee Ice drink, which helped a bit with the intensely spicy noodles I ordered. The drink was an additional $2 because it was a "Specialty Drink". It tasted like a regular sweet carbonated beverage with canned lychees at the bottom. I like that the restaurant places the drinks in the plastic cups because you can conveniently just take it with you at the end of the meal.

As for my family, they ordered....

Flat Rice Noodles in Malay Laksa Soup with Specialty Pork Sausages and Imitated Crab Meat

Rice Noodles in Malay Laksa Soup with Beef Tendon and Sliced Deep Fried Fish Cake

Rice Noodles in Tomatoes & Pumpkins Fish Soup with Beef Tendon and Beef Balls

We also shared two side orders of Deep Fried Pork Chop, which came with some mayonnaise sauce. The batter was fried to a nice crunch while retaining the juiciness of the meat.

A few weeks later, I revisited Deer Garden again with my family and boyfriend. I ordered the Rice Noodle in Malay Laksa Soup with Sliced beef and Sliced Deep Fried Fish Cake. I didn't bring my camera with me but the noodles essentially look the same as the malay laksa from the first visit. I really liked the soup base this time because it was barely spicy at all and had a rich creamy taste to it. The beef was very tender and the bowl of noodles also came with an abundant amount of vegetables.

I also ordered the Cold Milk Tea, which tasted too strongly of milk and wasn't sweet enough so I barely touched the drink at all.

In comparison to Cattle Cafe, the prices are exactly the same ($7.95, not including drinks or side orders) and since both restaurants have great tasting noodle combos, it's hard for me to say which is better. For my sister though, she prefers Deer Garden over Cattle Cafe.