Backyard Garden Restaurant

Reviews

• Gordon X.

  star star star star star_border 17 July 2026

  Being a bit hungry and adventurous, I picked a Szechuan restaurant. The servers speak mandarin and limited cantonese; no english. Taste the food and you will forget the language inconvenience!
  
  The braised eggplant dish was smothered with a spicy sauce and covered with shredded pork/raw garlic; yummy & spicy! The Yangzhou fried rice included huge delicious shrimps but did not have bbq pork. A recommended & repeat restaurant!

• Shanker N.

  star star star star star_border 10 July 2026

  Yummy. Great sichuan place. The restaurant is in an innocuous looking strip mall. It's very average looking. The place is reasonably clean.
  
  The food is another story. Very authentic Sichuan food. The fish in oil was excellent. The chicken dry chilli and the lamb cumin was amazing. The crab meat soup was delish. This is such a good option in Markham. Easy on the wallet.

• Vincent H.

  star star star_border star_border star_border 3 July 2026

  If you like spicy and your food drenched in chili oil then this may be your restaurant. This Sichuan-style Chinese food wasn't for me. There weren't many options for non-spicy eaters. The lamb skewers were probably the only decent thing I had.
  
  The portions aren't vey big. The food was pretty oily, some of the meat was a bit fatty. Every day lunch special isn't every day. Apparently it doesn't apply to weekends. Their English is really bad, it's basically a Mandarin only speaking restaurant. It was kind of disappointing.

• Tian Pu P.

  star star star star star_border 28 June 2026

  Wasnt planning on going here at lunch but was decently surprised. Gave it 4 stars because the place needs a bit maintenance (got an old chinese restaurant smell to it). The food i would give it 5 stars. They have this menu for lunch and all dishes on the menu was $6.99. It is an actual dish so no rice (separate $1.99). The dish size a tiny bit smaller because of the price but this way you can try alot more dishes. 1 person per dish is still enough though. Place can host 8 people. The flavour is decent. Service was good and alot of local trade guys was eating here at lunch. Seems alot of people do take out. Plaza has alot good food places so parking can get rough at peak times.

• Sandy J.

  star star star star star 25 June 2026

  They don't really speak English and there's NO FORTUNE COOKIES?? this spells very authentic already for when I'm sniffing out how good the food anticipated will be.
  
  The fierce competition of multiple Asian restaurants really makes the food scene in Toronto cut throat but delicious to those who are looking for good asian food. Most chefs who come to the US and open restaurants usually serve Americanized food or make some watered down spice version of Sichuan cooking- all sweet, sour, and salty but minus the true complex layer and yet simplicity of good Asian food. We decided to try this place after recommendations from the Taiwanese embassy and it was delicious! Husband is usually very particular about his Chinese food as he immigrated from China, but this was the first time in probably years that I've seen him this satisfied with every dish.
  
  Things to order: Dumplings (steamed b/c that way the wrappers are chewy but must be eaten fresh and hot to maximize taste), jelly fish appetizer, a hot pot dish (we chose spicy fish and tofu), king mushroom dish, sliced beef in flat bread.
  
  Jelly Fish- I love that the pieces are large and it is generous in portion. The true art is that this place slices its cucumbers and tofus very very thinly, an art that only those who cook can appreciate. The cucumbers are cut razor thin flavored accurately with vinegar, salt, hint of sugar, and sesame oil- the balance is good.
  
  Dumplings- we called the chives and pork and the pork, shrimp, and scallion ones. These are the best to stick to if you'er not feeling the more adventurous combinations but to be fair, the other offerings definitely bespeak how authentic this place is bc only authentic places would use pickled cabbage. Order these steamed anywhere you go b/c it's the best way to maintain a flavor- boiling it kind of blanches some of the flavor and loses the chewiness of any dumpling.
  
  The pancake used to wrap the beef was made with adequate oil the get that art of chewiness needed to make a good "Shao bing"- wrap with the razor thin sliced beef!
  
  Service- not the most westernized in terms of attentiveness but I'm giving them the 5/5 b.c truly of the food quality which is some of the best Chinese food I've encountered traversing the East coast.
  
  I think this is a solid place to go to if you're looking for good authentic dishes. there may be some americanized dishes (anything that is cup of rice with stir fry looking colorful veggies and meat combination is likely Americanized). It gets lively on the weekend, so prepare to either wait or avoid hot hours that people come to.