Review: Orient Garden in New Hyde Park

Is there anything more Long Island than a banquet-style Cantonese restaurant operating in the bones of an old diner? 

Tommy Tang, owner of Orient Odyssey in Jericho, hit it out of the park with his new venture Orient Garden, which has quickly become the go-to spot for dim sum on Long Island. He left the bones of the old Park City Diner in New Hyde Park, but added contemporary light fixtures and lots of marble and granite. The vast dining room is split into two sections, one with four-tops and the other full of large round tables with lazy Susans. Both fill up quickly on the weekends, so you may find yourself standing by the three-tiered fish tank for a bit.

That just gives you more time to scope out the carts full of salted egg custard buns, chicken feet, baked roast-pork buns, pork shumai, crystal shrimp dumplings, pan-fried leek dumplings, steamed rice noodles and sticky rice in lotus leaves (among others). This is not the highbrow dumplings coming out of kitchens like O Mandarin in Hicksville. The selection is sizable but it's mostly solid versions of the classics. 

The restaurant gets serious at dinner with a massive menu that includes special occasion dishes like lobster Cantonese and Chinese banquet meals that cost as much as $788. The hundreds of items include sizzling cast iron dishes that the menu labels as casseroles. The bone-in chicken with black mushrooms and Chinese sausage is a solid bet. Seafood is also plentiful with dishes like as salt-and-pepper shrimp, sliced conch and squid with scallions, sautéed lobster with salty egg yolk and steamed whole sea bass. A large selection of Cantonese-American dishes and "Weight Watchers Steamed Specials" make this restaurant accessible for the whole family. 

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