Rose Garden

Awesome food, awesome servicez This is the best Chinese food in Gainesville  hands down. It's so flavorful, I love there chicken wings.

The family owned and operated Rose Garden moved into the old Maui Teriyaki space this past fall, and it's a welcome addition to Alachua's food options. They made the interior look so much better and cleaner compared to Maui Teriyaki. It doesn't look or feel like the old space at all.  With the closing of some of the better restaurants in town, it's nice to have a reliably good place to eat at. At my first visit, I was so excited to see that this is a sit-down Chinese restaurant. It seems like the majority of Chinese restaurants to pop up around central Florida are the take-out variety with identical menus.

You can always order off the menu, but at peak times they operate a condensed buffet. The smaller buffet allows them to focus on quality as opposed to quantity. The options on their buffet are Chinese restaurant staples you would expect to see. I think it would be great for them to highlight one house specialty on their buffet each day, that way they could introduce their guests to their other menu options, while still allowing everyone to have something they know about. Generally they are not slammed, and their service if fast. How places like Brown's Country Buffet can be packed while much higher quality food is down the street is beyond me. What they do is reliable, fast, and affordable.

I would like to see them focus on preparing some "fine" dinning options. You can tell the chef has the standards down pat, but seeing a focus on house specialties would be icing on the cake. Given the location and potential audience, though, that kind of idea might not take off. Sadly, some people just want buffet action by the pound.