Lu’s Garden

Surprisingly good find in Alhambra. A good place for congee if you’re craving comfort food on a cold night.

Variety of food options. Kind and helpful service. Most important of all, the food is GREAT ! Would definitely recommend this restaurant for someone who likes to try good food

Great service, excellent food, price is ok. Poridge yam is do yummy. We come every other month.

Didn’t remember to take a picture until food was more or less gone. Very consistently delicious food and late hours perfect for some late night comfort food grub!
Not sure about the dinner price hike though. What is that about. Cheap prices should be a signature of these type of Chinese fast food places. After 5pm this place charges $ 7 – 10 for the same half portion for each dish :/​didn’t know about the price hike until I finished ordering. Proobbaaably won’t come back after 5pm again.

Four stars only because I am not a fan of porridge. But the other dishes here are really authentic. Being away from parents we usually seek out restaurant with a taste of home style cooking. This place definitely reminds me of my grandparents and the traditional Chinese food I grew up to love. Price is really fair, service is good but the only downside is parking when the plaza is busy

One of my favorite restaurants!!! They have great food and unlimited porridge. It’s comforting and delicious.

Quick service, nice place to come if you’re hungry and can’t wait to eat! All you have to do once you stepped into Lu’s Garden, is to get in line, order the dishes you want, get seated, and get ready to eat. They have lots of veggies options and it’s really delicious! Love the eggplants and long beans, it’s so crunchy and flavorful! Love the endless refills of porridge with sweet potato too. The dishes here makes me feel so homely. Thumbs up!

Really enjoyed this place! Tons of veggie options, quick service, and endless rice porridge with sweet Potatoe! Total win!!! Just a heads up, combo/​lunch special is from 1130−5pm & this is a Cash Only establishment.

Literally one of my favorite places to eat. I’ve been coming here since I was a kid. The food is super grub and is very good and it’s pretty cheap too. It’s open pretty late so you can swing by anytime. The only down side is sometimes the parking lot can get packed because it’s sharing a a lot with all of these other restaurants. But other than that, it’s awesome!

I come here with my family together .
I always come to order to go.
Today, we stay here .
I like here.
Very clean.

Total dive, walk in, order left, then get seated after they’ve plated your order.
Jook (aka congee or porridge) complete with yams, a variety of table sizes (we saw a group of 9 people being seated!), a tiny, cramped, busy parking lot, and a ton of items on the menu all ready to go.
It’s a bit weird to order first at a counter, then eat, THEN pay, but whatever works.
And while I’m not all that crazy about the food– the pork with hard boiled eggs is solid, as is the slightly vinegary jellyfish, the cold cucumber, and the green beans, plus the bean curd– something about this place strikes home hardcore as the right way to eat cheap Chinese food. It’s not nearly as good as the same kind of dive in Hong Kong or Singapore, but it’s eerily close, and some days that’s exactly what I crave.
3.5 stars.

My family has been coming here for years, but tonight was the first time I’d been back in a good while. The place is exactly like I remember it! Yam porridge + tasty sides!
Yummy in my tummy :)

What a cool concept. It’s a chinese porridge eatery where for a flat fee, a person gets to pick three savory choices to go with the butternut squash porridge for lunch. The only problem with the savory sides is the grease so pick wisely. My partner and I chose a few vegetables and these were very tasty. The pig ear was also quite good but a tad bit too greasy. Too bad there’s nothing like this in NorCal.

This is the perfect place on a nice, chilly, Fall evening.
Location/​Parking: This restaurant is located in the plaza just West of San Gabriel Superstore Plaza. It is inside the same plaza as Milk & Honey. Parking often times is very very difficult to find. We usually park in the San Gabriel Superstore Plaza and walk over.
Service: When you walk in, there is a wide variety of dishes to choose from. You can just point and they will put it on a small plate for you. Then when you have chosen all of your dishes, they direct you where to sit and you have your big bowl of porridge and tea pot waiting for you. They only provide service when you wave down the waitresses like to bring you drinks, more porridge, boxes to go, or for the check. They did check on us one time to ask if we wanted more porridge.
Food: Everything we chose was VERY tasty and goes perfectly with the porridge. I love that the porridge come with yams with refills of porridge. These are some dishes I would recommend:
–cold jellyfish
–braised bamboo shoots
–fresh cucumber salad
–dried fish with peanuts
–twice cooked pork

Overall: Although this place is a bit pricey for what you get, I will be coming back to satisfy my porridge craving. I love that they have such a wide selection to choose from and you can see what you’re ordering. Since I don’t speak Chinese, it was easy for me to just point at what dishes I wanted. :)

A simple, fast, and tasty Taiwanese restaurant right in the heart of San Gabriel. What more can a simple Taiwanese girl ask for? Hmm… maybe a credit card machine. Yes, like most Chinese restaurants, Lu’s Garden is Cash Only. But let’s not let that small fact deter one from this place because honestly, the food is good!
When you go in, you walk to the counter where you’ll find all of the food behind it. You just pick the ones you’d like to have and they will prepare all of them for you on plates and bring them to you. At your table, you’ll have an option of either rice or porridge… sweet potato porridge to be exact. YUM! I’m pretty sure this is complimentary. I always go for the porridge because it’s so plain, light, and still fulfilling!
Dishes we usually get would be:
–Stewed pork belly
–Vegetable (of some kind)
–Eggplant
–Fish
–and Cold side dishes
The pricing here is pretty good. My family really likes this place, and they are 100% Taiwanese.
Besides being cash only, the parking lot is a little ridiculous. I’d say don’t even try to park in the lot they have. Instead, drive like…10 feet out to the San Gabriel Superstore parking lot for a less-​than-​5 minute walk to the restaurant!
This restaurant is a safe option for me if I want yummy food in Taiwanese family style, and I’m feeling extremely casual. Since we live so close, mom and I will most likely make this place our go-​to restaurant soon!

For Taiwanese breakfast, I’m a big fan of porridge and dishes. I can’t believe I only found out about this place recently.
My mom decided to take me here for breakfast since they have a great combo deal. All you can eat porridge with yam with 6 side dishes of your choice for less than $ 20. The restaurant was pretty empty because it was on a weekday morning, although the parking lot was quite packed.
I absolutely loved all the dishes that we got, they did a good job bringing out the ingredient’s flavor, which is important for side dishes that go with porridges. My favorite was the intestine, and the tiny squid.
Can’t wait to go back and try more side dishes! –1 star because they probably put quite an amount of MSG since I had to chug a lot of tea…

NO NO NO
Please someone tell me I got ripped off.
Usually when I haven’t eaten yet late at night and I’m still outside I tend to go to Noodle World, because it opens till 1am, it’s cheap, quick and they have a lot of dishes. Usually I pay around $ 7 – 9
But I thought maybe I should try something else. And Lu’s Garden has a lot of reviews and I heard of it before.
Seeing all these reviews saying 3 dishes for $ 6.97 or something… wow must be good. Even thought it’s a lunch deal. I assume ordering at 11pm shouldn’t be that much of a price difference either.
WRONG.
I don’t like these places where it doesn’t tell you exactly how much the food you order actually cost. They just told me all the dishes have different prices. In order to save a little bit I told them I don’t want rice, I’ll cook it myself at home.
— — — — — — — — -
I picked only 2 dishes and I paid $ 12.97 ???
PLEASE SOMEONE TELL ME I GOT RIPPED OFF so at least I can go back and insist to get my money back.

I love porridge! The lunch specials are so good at Lu’s and sooo worth it. When you walk in there’s a counter where you can pick three dishes of your choice and they give you mini portions of it on a plate that will go along with porridge with sweet potatoes or rice. I usually order: ‘mu-​er’ wood-​ear or that black mushroom thingy, ‘4 ji dou’ green beans, ‘snow veggies’, ‘gua zi rou’ the minced pork with pickled veggies, brown tofu swirls — usually if I don’t know or remember the name I just point at it and nod and/​or taiwanese sausage.
I believe the porridge and rice are refillable. They give you fortune cookies at the end of the meal. I never liked the taste of fortune cookies — I just eat them for the fortune.

Yummy!!! Been coming here since I was a younging and brings back memories of home, Good for all ages and generations.
Plenty of sides to choose from with porridge and yams. Everything is so good and not overwhelming at all. Price is excellent during the weekdays.
Bonus*** My grandmother’s favorite spot! She can eat everything here and she can eat here all day.

Some Hot Porridge would do the trick on a cold winter evening! My parents and I decided to grab some midnight snack here after watching Disney On Ice and though they offer some straight vegetarian dishes, i considered it way too oily.
I looked in my bowl of porridge and i can literally use the oil to fry an egg!
So a big bowl of Porridge is counted by how many people are eating out of it. For example, 3 person = $ 3.59 per person for a big rice bowl container to share. So if your eating by yourself with a big appetite than it would be most worth it because you can pack it to go.
Each small plate of vegetable is another $ 4 or so, personally I think should be at $ 3 for the size of the plate. Regardless we wanted a hot food, this was good enough to make everyone feel satisfied.