Peking Garden Chinese Restaurant and UrbanSpoon
UrbanSpoon is restaurant review site that I’ve been recently relying on to find new places to try while eating out. I like the fact that you can select different categories (i.e. Mexican, Italian, seafood) and sort the list by popularity/rating.
Since a lot of “foodies” use the site, I thought I could trust the rating system on UrbanSpoon but it turns out that we have to take the ratings listed on the site with a grain of salt. It seems that the problem that plagues other review sites like TripAdvisor and Citysearch, applies here as well. My guess is that savvy restaurant owners are skewing the ratings on UrbanSpoon in their favor. How else can one explain the reason for “Peking Garden” being listed as one of the top Chinese restaurants in Raleigh??
Until this past weekend, I had never been to Peking Garden since it looked to be one of those run of the mill old-school chinese restaurants from the 1980′s. But still it’s listed as one of the top picks in the area, so I thought I’d give it a try. bad idea.
I should have went with my instincts and stayed away from this place. It’s definitely old-school. From the bamboo decor to the koi fish pond, the place looks to be frozen in time, with no intention of updating their look or their food. And boy, is the food old fashioned and sad to say, just plain awful.
The General Tso’s was basic and passable. But the more expensive “gourmet” (not!) Hawaiian shrimp dish – was a joke. essentially prepackaged shrimp drowned in a “sweet & sour” sauce. oh and don’t get me started on the “Chicken in Garlic Sauce”. It’s more like GARLIC and more garlic with some chicken in it. I’m going to be smelling like garlic for days. oh and whatever you do, don’t ever order the double pan fried noodles with chicken. what a waste of money.
Two obvious tip offs that I unfortunately chose to ignore:
1) the place was far from crowded during dinner
2) we were the only asians dining there during our visit. So, if other asians won’t come to eat your asian food, what does that tell you??
This is no damn “hidden gem”, I can honestly tell you that right now. Obviously the owners (and friends/family etc) are tech savvy enough to know how to place these bogus votes/ratings on the various review sites like UrbanSpoon. Either that or these local yokels have absolutely no idea what good asian cuisine is supposed to taste like!
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