Deer Garden Signature

Two stars for the decent foods.
I ordered a noodle soup and a clay pot, after i finished my noodle i found out they have forgotten to order my clay pot.
So i waited for another 25 mins…
In the end waitress packed my rice for me but i wanted to eat the rice IN the pot, thats the most important thing right?! Oh well i guess she was just being nice.

My husband and I have been here a couple times and we’ve enjoyed it. I like that you can customize your soup however you want. There are certain ingredients that I don’t care for my soup and I like that I can check off that I don’t want them also that I can add double meat. The soups come with a drink of choice I believe it’s milk tea, coffee, and regular tea; Hot or iced. I will definitely return

TLDR: Decent food, Horrible service, Questionable sanitation, Unreasonably long wait times.
I’ll start by saying that I have a huge soft spot for noodles, and theirs are actually not bad. There are a lot of combos you could potentially get so most people could probably find something they really like with a few tries.
But, even if their food were absolutely amazing, (which it isn’t) it does not make up for the litany of other horrible things about this place. I think noodles are answer to all of life’s problems, so I’ve endured a lot of their shit (literally, I’ll get to that later), but after a certain point I just couldn’t do it anymore. Below is a list of some of their most egregious F-​ups.
1. Long wait: I’ve been to a lot of noodle places with a similar ordering/​serving styles (mostly in China) so I know how it’s done. They usually have the broth ready in the back and when the order comes in they just throw everything into a metal ladle with a net and cook it up (think of it like Chipotle for noodles). This process usually shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes, yet somehow, they always just barely manage to do it in 15, even when there aren’t any other tables waiting.
(I know my complaint might be little nitpicky, but this, coupled with the employees’ don’t-give-a-shit attitude, has always really annoyed me.)
2. I have once waited for over 2 hours for my food. Granted, it was really busy when we first got in there, but after about an hour it died down a lot. We asked them about our order and it turned out they just forgot about it, even though we were sitting RIGHT in front of the counter. After they found our order (it was literally right next to the order pile) we thought we’d be able to get our food pretty soon. BUT NOPE, we got to wait another hour for them to get it out to us.
3. My family went there without me once (because maybe we’re all masochists, and we all like being treated badly). My mom told me afterwards, that when they brought the food out, there was the distinctive smell of human excrement. She wasn’t sure if she was just imagining it, and she didn’t want to ruin the rest the party’s meal, so she asked for some vinegar to try and overpower the poop smell. When she received it, she noticed that it had gone bad. At that point she rage quit and gave up eating there ever again.
This doesn’t even cover the CONSISTENTLY shitty service that many other Unilocalers have mentioned in their review. I feel that people usually will overlook the horrible service because the food isn’t bad and it’s cheap. But after the poop noodle incident, I’ve finally decided that that nothing is worth the degradation that is eating there.
I try not to be pushy about my opinion on restaurants, because everyone has different tastes. But there are so many great restaurants out there run by people who actually appreciate their customers. Don’t waste your time or money on this piece-​of-​shit establishment that couldn’t care less about you as long as you give them your money. Save your money and give it to someone more deserving.

This review isn’t about Deer Garden’s food nor their service, but it is about their audacity to enter a tip amount EQUAL to the grand total.
My mom took us here to eat, since there is a great selection of soup noodle. The bill totaled around $ 40 for the four of us, and after tax and tip it hovered around $ 50. She signs the receipt and we leave, thinking nothing more of this place.
A week later, my mom gets a call from the credit card company asking about a $ 100 charge at Deer Garden, because the tip was $ 50. I’m glad the credit card company asked whether the establishment was worth a 50% tip, because it wasn’t.
Unfortunately this credit card company doesn’t do the arguing for you, so my mom had to go back to this place. Luckily they yielded pretty quickly, since my mom produced her copy of the receipt. Even they know that a $ 50 tip on a $ 40 meal is outrageous.
Moral: 1.) Keep your receipts. 2.) Have a good credit card that looks after your back. And 3.) DON’T eat at places that, whether intentionally or unintentionally, bill you incorrectly.

I go to Mekong plaza allot but was very hesitant on trying this place! Finally I was introduced by a few friends and the food is actually good! The soup was very savory and the portion is huge! They have allot of noodles and they have a build you own menu too! It was my first time there so I let my friend order for me and then I added on extra sides onto my bowl for 1 $ extra. My bowl was still cheap! They don’t have a large variety for drinks though. The cup is so tiny and I feel like they are very stingy with their drinks. I asked for more water and it was never done. The service was ok. Not the best service… I had to keep repeating myself… Kinda annoyed by that. After they drop off your food you’re basically on your own. I would come back again and try something else, but I have a feeling this place will tick you off if you’re really high with service, cause it’s not that great here.

Worst service I’ve ever experienced. As a former server, the wait staff is clueless and lack the fundamentals of serving. They’ll sit you without menus until you have to flag them and ask. They never ask if you need a drink and even if you tell them they have to be reminded… and it goes on and on. It’s so bad it’s funny.
With that said though I eat her on the regular! Because their Malay Laksa soup with hk wontons and thin egg noodles hits the spot every time. I’m addicted. If you can look past the horrible service it’s a decent place to eat. The food is worth it and it’s cheap.

The food was ok, the service was really, really slow. After ordering, my guest and I waited about 30 minutes. We were warned it would be a 20 minute wait.

My friends and I have been eyeing this place for a while. We finally decided to give it a try this weekend. They don’t have many selections when it comes to soft drinks so be aware. As soon as you sit down, they will give you a menu allowing you to check off what items you want for your noodle soup, broth and noodles of your choice. Very neat. We all ordered few appetizers. One of which was the «Fried bun». It comes with total of 3 and it was absolutely delicious. My friend ordered fried chicken wings and it was juicy and tasty. I wish it would have come with more than just 2 per dish. For entrée, I ordered my childhood favorite, spare rib with black beans in clay pot. The rice was cooked just the way I like it, spare ribs are not as favorable and I did not taste any black beans at all. Overall it is decent. Not spectacular. I will come back here to try more appetizers and possibly their noodle dish.
Service was decent and polite. The restaurant is relatively clean and spacious.

Design your own soup! This is the perfect way to warm up on a chilly day. The menu is pretty self explanatory. Check off your broth, type of noodles, protein, and other toppings. You can also request no cilantro, etc. They also offer cheap appetizers and clay pot dishes.
I had a little bit of some laksa soup and indulged mainly in the appetizers. The appetizers were well executed. The chicken wings were juicy with a light crispness and well seasoned. The fried fish was perfectly crispy with tender fish inside. The fried buns were excellent as well, and were very fresh and piping hot.
The laksa soup was lighter tasting and more watery than I’m used to, but overall had decent flavor and definitely had a spicy kick to it. The clay pot dish (spare ribs) was tasty as well and the spare ribs were very tender.
The menu also allows you to check off your drink of choice as well, but only has selections for tea or coffee. They do have soda (Coke products) but you have to write them in.
Service was decent and our order came out fairly quickly. Overall I’ll come here again if I’m in a noodle soup mood.

I like their food, the thick rice noodle in the soup just like the ones that i had in China. However, the waiting time for food is a bit long, and the stuff don’t seem welcome you that much.

Holy crap! I don’t know where to even begin with this place! Staff, let’s start with staff, they all look like a bunch of college students who don’t really speak english or really care about their customers unless it’s their own friends that come in. Luckily I speak Cantonese so I could flag down atleast one of the people that worked there! They aren’t very attentive nor do they really care about their customers, it was almost like we were bothering them to do their job. One of the girls spilled the hot milk tea on my boyfriend and our table, didn’t apologize, took a good 3 minutes to grab 3 napkins, and just LAYED the napkins over the spill, then walked off. What on earth?! Is that what you do at home?! Speaking of milk tea, it was SUPER watered down and had absolutely no flavor to it.
Now onto the food, half of our party got there 20 minutes before the rest so we ordered the claypot rice ahead of time, then ordered 4 different bowls of noodles, one which had their original fish broth, which no longer tasted like what it used to be. when the rest of our party came they ordered their noodle bowls and somehow theirs came out before the first groups did. then we got 2 random wings sent to our table, well that made absolutely no sense, no one ordered it and if it was on the house, why would you give us two when there’s 8 plus people there?!? Do we all each take one bite and pass it down?!
We were short utensils and napkins as well, couldn’t flag anyone down to get more so we had to go up to the counter and ask, that spilled milk tea wasn’t replaced, although I wouldn’t have drank or wanted another one anyways, so in conclusion I don’t really care for this place unless I were to get it to go. I only gave this place a 2 star because my spouse loved his noodles that he created lol.
I’ve had better service at a drive thru!

So think of which which or chipotle, a place where you design your own plate. Now enter here and you design your own Asian soup. You start with choosing a base, so tom yum, Achaean spicy, basic chicken broth etc. then pick your type
Of noodle, whether it is udon or thin rice noodles, then you pick your 2 topping whether it’s mushrooms, pork blood, brisket, wonton dumplings– GET THE WON TON DUMPLINGS! And it’s all for $ 8.50 for a huge bowl. We got
A side of Bok Choy for an extra $ 1.50, but for price, this place kills it.

I’ve been here at least 3 times, and I’ve enjoyed every time here.
First of all, the ordering process consist of filling out a form and handing to the server. Due to the plethora of soups and toppings you can choose from, it’s actually reasonable, but I found it weird my first time.
FOOD: The portion sizes here are huge, so I would just order a entrée (noodle soup) with an appetizer for two people. My favorite soup is the papaya soup, and I just change up the type of noodle and toppings every time I go. The soup’s flavors are very subtle and savory.
Overall, a really good Asian noodle soup place. Even though there are other phở places in the same plaza, I prefer Deer Garden every visit.

Good try noodle shop but not quite there to be anything outstanding. Not bad though.
Really liked the appetizers: Fried buns with condensed milk and the wings.
As for noodle– in my party, we tried different combos of noodles. Everyone thought their dish was alright. Personally, I got the Thai tom yum soup, thick egg noodle, wontons, and beef tendon balls. Soup was
alright. Egg noodle was mediocre. Wontons were actually the only good thing in my bowl! Beef tendon balls were basic. Milk tea was basically water.
Service was lacking. Not attentive. Took like 10 minutes after we sat down to get water.
Just get the wontons. Get the appetizers. Skip the noodles. I heard the clay pot rice bowl is good too though.

Food: huge portion! I like how they let you customize your soup with different broths, noodles and toppings. Although the menu is confusing, especially for those who can’t read Mandarin/​Cantonese (I’m not sure which one exactly), just go for whatever sounds good to you; since everything I’ve tried so far is pretty tasty. I’ve had the original fish broth, malay laksa, tomyum, instant noodles, korean clear noodles, fish fillets, HK style wontons, shrimp, bokchoy, fried pork, fried buns, etc. I’m looking forward to come back and try more combinations of soup to find my favorite of all.
Service: this is the reason why I gave this place 4 stars instead of 5. Service is so-​so. Servers don’t seem to care much about you after they dropped off your food. Every time I ask for iced water, I always have to repeat myself multiple times with different servers. It makes me feel like they don’t want to spare a glass of ice water for me since they charge $ 1 extra for cold drinks. Additionally, unless I ask for it, I never got my water refilled.
Location: they are right at the entrance to the food court of Mekong Plaza. I never have to wait for a table though they always have decent amount of people dining. You just walk right in and sit wherever.
Overall, pretty good place to come for just a huge tasty bowl of noodle soup. Will come back to try more things on the menu.

I’ve been here countless time. If I want to eat soup and shop grocery, this is the only place I will get my fish soup with several different add-​ons.
If you coming at lunch time over the weekend, you will wait probably 30 minutes to be seated.

Gosh this place has the potential to be amazing but because I’m not a regular, I didn’t know exactly what to order. I wish they had pictures of the types of noodles that we could choose from so I knew what I was doing. I ordered the Original Fish Soup broth with Instant Noodles (basically ramen) and added seaweed, fried egg, beef brisket, fish balls and sliced squid. For $ 8.95 you get to choose a broth, 2 toppings and a milk tea ($ 1 more if you get iced milk tea, which in my opinion was NOT good — it tasted like overbrewed Lipton tea with a splash of milk). Each additional topping is $ 1. I definitely overdid it with my toppings — next time I’ll pass on the fried egg, squid and seaweed.
My husband ordered Gingko & Pepper Fish broth with instant noodles with bok choy and sliced beef briskets. The bowl came out without the brisket and when he went to tell them, she didn’t believe him and came back to the table with our original written order and had him «fish» around the bowl with his chopsticks to make sure there were indeed no briskets in there. So odd. By the time hubs was almost done with his meal, a small bowl of brisket came out.
We also ordered 4 appetizers which were pretty small, comparable to tapas. Two of the appetizers never came out, they even circled it on the receipt yet still charged us for it. When we questioned them, she basically said, «oh yeah. ok, well do you want them or do you want me to take it off the bill?» Since we didn’t know when we’d be back and heard that the buns were delish, we said we’d wait for them. Glad we waited because both the fried pork chop (small serving and 2 each) and the Deep fried bun were so good. As a courtesy, they also gave us a side of their wings which were super good.
So service is a bit off, the food was pretty good — and I’d definitely come back again so I can try to perfect my noodle dish.

Have walked by this restaurant so many times we finally decided to try it out.
Located in Mekong Plaza at the main entrance.
You select your soup base, two items and then a noodle.
Most of the soup base are a fish type and then there are a great selection of items to include in your soup base for $ 8.50.
There are sides for less than $ 2.00, we tried the pork chops and wings which was like a tapas.
I looked on the back of the menu and decided to play it safe with the Hong Kong Style Won Ton Noodle Soup which was a great choice. My wife was more adventurous and ordered a concoction with fish soup base. Was definitely very fishy but good with a lot of ingredients.
Of course inside Mekong Plaza there are many selections to eat, this place deserves another time to come back to try different soups.
The service is not the greatest and you have to pull the servers to your table and for the bill.
One tip is the restaurant is 98% Asians and mostly young college student age so you know it is good and inexpensive.

At first I was a bit hesitant about eating here. The name for some reason reminded me of deer horn and what kind of food does a «Deer Garden» serve anyways?
Once inside though I discovered that DGS is actually a pretty popular chain serving up big bowls of noodles and clay pot dishes. It’s confusing but enticing menu lets you choose your own adventure with a variety of sides, broth, and noodles you pick from. I went with the Szechuan spicy soup, big noodles, brisket, luncheon meat (spam), and brisket.
The result was… SPICY and really good. Think Neoguri but in a hearty fish broth and way better noodles. It was hard to put down but when I finally did I had enough left for a meal the next day. I also tried some of my friends Hong Kong won ton soup but it paled compared to my garlicky spicy bowl. The only downside to the meal was the stringy brisket which carried the added sin of being a bit flavorless.
I’d come back to Deer Garden just for this tear-​causing broth but the other dishes on the menu look quite appetizing as well. One of the better chains out there, though on their website all their other chains seem to be in Canada.
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What Kay said below is pretty much what the service is like — pretty non-​existent. (Some asian restaurants have those wireless call bells but here you have to wave em down ^^”)

The soup base was good. The noodles were good. Overall, the meal was good. I really like how you can customize your bowl of noodle soup. I got the Korean noodles and spam and brisket toppings with Malay soup base. It was delicious.
Price is comparable to phở or other ramen shops so it’s not like you are doing something more expensive than usual. This place can add variety to your diet or restaurant choices!
I like that there were TVs and I was able to watch the games. Although the service was a little lacking. There weren’t any servers. More like there were a bunch of college kids hanging out and they happened to be also bringing food and water to you and pretending to be servers.
Oh yeah, they should also mark on their menu what is spicy and what is not. Too bad they don’t so beware!