Zen Garden: A Bounty of Flavor

Zen Garden is an elaborate Cantonese restaurant with a flair for artistry. A beautiful garden surrounds the restaurant that is carefully maintained by a professional gardening company. Cook to order dim sum, high and healthy quality entrees, and dedicated chefs are some of the many ingredients that make Zen Garden such a special place to dine.

Zen Garden

Location: 16300 Mill Creek Blvd. Mill Creek, WA 98012

Cuisine: Cantonese cuisine, Americanized Chinese cuisine

Capacity: 200

Offers: dine-in, banquet room, VIP room

Signature Dish: Prepared in Hong Kong Style with Head on Shrimp, Steam Sea Bass, Mongolian Beef, General Tso’s Chicken

Drinks: Pepsi, Aquafina-Flavor Splash, tea, Gatorade-Fruit Punch

Year of establishment: 1970s (took over in 2005)

Phone: 425-745-6668

Website: http://zengardenmillcreek.com/

The Scene

Zen Garden is an upscale restaurant located in Snohomish County, Washington. Though far away from downtown Seattle, a highway has been built that brings life to the area. The restaurant has over 10,000 square feet of dining space and a party room that can accommodate over 200 diners. Renowned in its local community, regional papers report on the restaurant every 2-3 months.

A unique and stylish interior design compliments a spectacular view of the backyard garden, a pond, and lush willows. Zen Garden also offers a full service function bar.

The owner, Wenzhong Huang, boasts that customers who sit anywhere in the restaurant can have a clear view of the backyard garden and enjoy the beautiful scenery while simultaneously sampling the restaurant’s mouth-watering creations.

The Food

Zen Garden offers authentic Cantonese and Americanized Chinese cuisine. The house specialty is dim sum. The menu offers a variety of dim sum ranging from juicy steamed pork dumplings to crispy pan fried spring rolls to flavorful sticky rice rolls. Each type of dim sum is a small portion which allows costumers to have more choices and try more food. With such a large selection of dim sum and the irresistible flavor of each, Zen Garden can rival any other dim sum eateries in the area.

It is customary to serve dim sum in the morning until noon time while drinking tea (the Cantonese called it Yum Cha), but Zen Garden serves dim sum all day. Initially, the management worried that while the Chinese crave dim sum, the American palette would reject the food. But numerous online comments provide evidence of how dim sum is popular with the customers.

One customer noted that “Their dim sum menu is pretty extensive…The juicy pork dumplings are one of the better ones in the greater Seattle area (they actually have juice, surprise, surprise!)” Another said: “We went there for dim sum.  Items on its menu are your typical dim sum dishes.  The food it serves is slightly more refined than what is served in other Chinese dim sum establishments that I've been to in Seattle.  It is lighter, less salty and less greasy, but better tasting at the same time. A welcoming change!”

At Zen Garden, all dim sum is cooked made to order. There are no wheeling carts where you can pick up your favorites, because the dim sum is only prepared when the customers order a dish; in this way, dim sum at Zen Garden is fresher and less wasteful. The dim sum chef has over ten years’ experience under his belt and was once a chef in a fine restaurant in Las Vegas.

If you crave dim sum, reservations are strongly recommended. When the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, the restaurant is full of patrons imbibing Cantonese “Yum Cha.” The dim sum menu is colorful, and each dish has a picture so that customers can see exactly what they want.

Seafood is also a highlight of Cantonese cuisine. Prepared in a Hong Kong Style, the Head on Shrimp is a famed dish on the menu. There also many health-conscious items on the menu, including many with vegetables that are either steamed or boiled upon request. In addition, Huang has developed some healthy creations which are seasoned with Chinese herbs. Huang believes that the Chinese herbs have various functions and if matched well with food, they are very healthy and also tasty. Zen Garden also offers seasonal dishes that feature fresh ingredients such as mushrooms and pumpkin.

The Service

Zen Garden has taught its employees to value all customers as family members and serve them in a patient and friendly way. The owner always sticks to a customer-oriented service: "I know that staff and customers are indispensable components for a restaurant. I try to make each staff and customers clear that the restaurant is their second home. The staff is treated as one of the family... and they should consider the customers as their family members so that they would try their best to satisfy the customers upon request."

Owner

Two decades ago, the restaurant (originally named Imperial Garden) was opened by Wuchang Chang, a well-known economist in both China and America. But unfortunately, the restaurant closed in 1995. Ten years later Huang and his three partners found this hidden gem and decided to buy the property. In 2005, the establishment reopened with a new name “Zen Garden” and people in the Snohomish County have the luxury to dine in the fine establishment.

When asked about what the name implies, Huang explained that he came up with the name in the hope of creating a peaceful and harmonious environment for all. “We come from various parts of China, and we didn’t know each other before we meet here, I hope we can help each other and better the establishment.” said Huang.

Huang was once a TCN (traditional Chinese medicine) doctor before he immigrated to the United States. Before taking over the restaurant, he worked in many different fields. The other three partners came from a variety of backgrounds: one was a veteran chef, one was a real estate agent in Vancouver, and the other was a pharmacist.

Message from the owner: "It was the joint effort of the whole team that our restaurant could provide the relaxing atmosphere, high quality food and friendly service to our customers and bring the restaurant to a higher level. For me, the most important part is to attract more customers and rebuild the confidence of customers who choose to eat out less. I won’t cut costs of ingredients to make profits. The high quality must be guaranteed.”

In the future, Huang and his partners hope to launch some new and enticing dishes to bring in more customers. Zen Garden also hopes do some promotions through newspaper, magazine and television to attract new customers while retaining current customers.

Zen Garden has joined the Top 100 Chinese Restaurants in the United States competition and has been the winner of “Top 100 Best Décor” and “Top 100 Overall Excellence” besting numerous other Chinese restaurants.