Mystery Diner: Oriental Gardens a Chinese delight on Main Street in Princeton

Nestled on South Main Street in Princeton sits a small Chinese restaurant that gets big, positive reviews throughout the year.

Oriental Gardens is among people’s top favorite restaurants in town and is always a “must visit” place to go when natives return to the area.

When trying to decide which restaurant to review next for this Mystery Diner feature, I asked my family what they were in the mood for, and Chinese food was the answer. So, we pulled up the menu for Oriental Gardens online and started making a list for our takeout order.

We started with the appetizer list. Oriental Gardens offers plenty of starter options – whether you’re in the mood for egg rolls, crab meat rangoons, pot stickers or fried wontons – Oriental Gardens has you covered. We actually couldn’t decide on one appetizer, so we opted for the item at the bottom of the list, the pu pu platter, which comes with a little bit of everything. The menu says the platter item is enough for two people, but I truly believe this would satisfy up to four people. It comes with chicken and beef teriyaki bites on a stick, a handful of fried chicken pieces, two egg rolls and two crab meat rangoons.

This platter went over well among our family. The kids loved the idea of eating meat off a stick and split the egg rolls and crab meat rangoons. We each dipped the fried chicken pieces in duck sauce that came with the meal, and we can proudly say there were no leftovers to be had with the pu pu platter. It was certainly a crowd-pleaser.

Next on our order was soup. Oriental Gardens offers six soup options, including egg drop, vegetable, wonton, hot and sour, chicken sizzling rice and shrimp sizzling rice. We’re big fans of wonton soup, so it was a quick decision to opt for their pint size. You also can order soup in a quart size. I always get a little nervous about the packaging of to-go soup, but I will say Oriental Gardens does it right in a secure plastic container that kept our soup hot and ready to serve back at home. This soup is a must try. The broth is very mild, similar to a chicken noodle soup broth. The wontons are like a dumpling filled with bites of beef. The soup is garnished with green onion slices that give a nice crunchy seasoning to the broth.

As for the entrees, we decided to go with two classics – the sweet and sour chicken, which came with white rice and the peppered steak and onions, which came with brown rice. No surprises when it came to the sweet and sour chicken. The sauce was sweet and tangy and comes with pineapple pieces, onions and green pepper bites. The meat was prepared in nice bite sizes and was a good quality cut of chicken.

The pepper steak and onions entree comes with a generous amount of steak slices with chunks of green peppers and onions in a meaty sauce. The entrees both offered plenty of meat and rice. We had leftovers we spared for the following day.

When it comes to entrees at Oriental Gardens, you are sure to find what you’re looking for. There’s plenty of classic combo options including black pepper chicken, Mongolian beef, General Tso’s chicken, sesame chicken, plus fried shrimp, fried chicken and any lo mein you can imagine. Plus, their menu breaks up the options nicely by categorizing seafood, poultry, beef, pork, chow mein or chop suey so it doesn’t overwhelm the customer when ordering.

As for a dessert, there’s not too many options on the menu, but that was OK, because we easily could have stopped at the entrees and called it a good meal. But we decided to see what they had to satisfy our sweet tooth. Oriental Gardens offers almond cookies and fortune cookies at the bottom of the menu, but hidden in the appetizer list are fried doughnuts. This caught our eye, and we decided to give them a try not knowing what to expect. We had never even heard of fried donuts at a Chinese restaurant.

This decision just might have been the best one we made all week. The fried doughnuts blew away any and all expectations we might have had. Ten warm doughnut rolls came in the order. The doughnuts were not anything like the glazed doughnuts we all know, but rather fried bread rolls sprinkled with sugar. The warm dough melted in our mouths and the only thing we regretted was that we barely had enough room to have more than two each. If you’re going to Oriental Gardens, don’t overlook the fried doughnuts, they are sure to be a crowd-pleaser, and you won’t regret trying them out.

The restaurant is not offering indoor dining at this time due to COVID-19 restrictions, but Chinese food is the perfect takeout meal.

The restaurant does not have an active Facebook page or website, but a menu easily be found online through a Google search.

The Mystery Diner is an employee at Shaw Media. The diner's identity is not revealed to restaurant staff when ordering or picking up the food. If the Mystery Diner cannot recommend the establishment, we will not publish a story.