Flourishing Garden

While this place is now closed, I want to warn anyone who plans to get catering with them when they reopen their business (likely to be under a new name).

I booked them for a wedding because they did my sister's wedding in 2015. While communication was inconsistent with Ming and Lisa, I still went with them since there are very few Chinese wedding caterers in the Bay Area. I should have took note of that as a red flag early on.

For context, my wedding got rescheduled from 2020 to 2021. Ming already started being very unresponsive at the beginning of 2021. Come 2 months prior to the wedding, I reached out to Ming every day for an entire week and he didn't respond to any of my calls, texts, or emails. He finally responded over email letting me know that he could not cater my wedding anymore and would refund me the deposit. He stopped responding to my emails ever since and never refunded me my money. Very disappointing because he seemed like a very accommodating and kind in our early interactions.

I would've understood if he couldn't cater the wedding had he informed me at least 6 months prior and refunded my money for not providing any services at all. The lack of transparency, poor communication and dishonest business practices are simply unacceptable.

Dim Sum is a great brunch style for people in Hong Kong. What make this a great way to enjoy on the weekend? Because it's delicious and easy.

Here is my scoring card for this restaurant:

1) Location: ( 5 Point ) - Great location for customer to see and find. Great parking for parking lot parking.

2) Decoration : (2 Point) - They still have the original decoration. Clean but not up to date.

3) Price: ( 4 point)- The price is competitive but still a little bit pricey compare to other same stars and type food they serve

4) Quality and Taste : ( 3 point)- The quality is ok, food taste is good and portions are average .

5) Type of cuisine standard : ( 4 point) - The style of Chinese food they serve is pretty close to the way it was prepare in Hong Kong. Not bad! But some dishes did have slightly modify to cater the customer's need

Overall it's not bad and I thinks it's great to give it a try and let me know what you think. Go foodies



Total max is 25

Score 18

Stars = 72% round up to 3 stars

3/7/20

Well, we only got dimsum here so that's the only food reflected in the low score. The dimsum was pretty bad though.

For one, the steamed ribs were half raw. Secondly, the chicken feet wasn't quite raw, but wasn't really cooked enough either, although it was still edible unlike the ribs. Thirdly, the sticky rice totally stuck to the ultra-thin lotus leaves. Pretty much made them impossible to eat since every attempt made at scooping out any rice merely just tore away at the leaf that you'd madly try to hold down with your fingers. In the end, the rice would win the fight, and you're going to the bathroom to clean up the horrible sticky mess...

Got some other stuff too, and they weren't as bad, but weren't good either.

Totally craptastic.

1/5

#dimsum #sanjose

covid illegal mandates killed this business. great job democrats

I believe this place is officially closed. Made a stop this morning and saw construction guys cleaning the place house.

Although the Flourishing Garden hasn't really been flourishing in recent years, I'm sorry to see it with the windows boarded up, going the way of all things.
A good dim sum spot back in the nineties, now but a memory. Where am I going to go to get bean curd sheets stuffed with shrimp now?

Food: We ordered rice noodle roll with shrimp, shrimp dumplings, eggplant and shrimp dumpling, mushroom and shrimp dumpling, and tofu and shrimp dumpling ($19 total before tax). I actually really did enjoy the rice noodle roll and the eggplant and shrimp. However, I wasn't a fan of the har gow at all. Mainly, I didn't like the taste of the translucent skin. It tasted stale. The mushroom dumpling was pretty sad too. The mushroom cap was so tiny, it didn't surround the shrimp like it should.

Parking: Free! They have their own lot.

Service: There was one waiter working when we visited for lunch on a weekday and he was pretty attentive and friendly.

Dim sum is alright. They have been on the lower end of quality since when I was a child. Still the same today. The food is decent and the price is on the lower end. I suppose it only makes sense. The food correlates with the price. It's a pretty okay place to get dim sum and whatnot. It's also a very good venue when you have an event and are a bit tight on budget.

Service is good. The servers come around pretty quickly to clean the table of finished dishes as well as place new dishes out.

This place isn't bad for being close by if you want simple dim sum. I've been here a couple times in the past, but recently came back and everything we ordered came out delicious as I had remembered. We arrived close to 2pm on a Friday and it was slow. I'm not sure if they changed their way of ordering or if we just came too late in the day, but they used to go around pushing carts filled with dim sum dishes and you'd get to pick which ones you wanted, but this time, we were given a paper menu with pictures to order off of and our waiter just marked it on there.

We ordered the pork dumplings, shrimp dumplings, beef tripe, beef honeycomb, chicken feet, and honey walnut prawns! Everything arrived hot from the kitchen. The honey walnut prawns were so good and creamy, we had to place another order of those, lol. Dumplings were great in flavor and texture. No complaints here. Our waiter was super friendly and tended to all our needs. He filled up our water glasses and replaced our tea kettle when we were running low. And I hate to say it, but our experience here was better than the experience we had at Din Tai Fung. I said it. Maybe we got lucky. :)

Cash and card accepted. Flourishing Garden is located in a small plaza and offers plaza parking.

I went here with 5 friends on a Sunday and didn't have to wait for a table. There were many empty tables here. It wasn't long before we were able to pick our dim sum from the carts. They're quick here but the food isn't that good. I think the best thing I ate was their porridge.

Overall I probably won't go back here but if you're hungry for dim sum and don't want to wait, this place will probably suffice for you.