Golden Garlic

Definitely a place that serves legit Chinese cuisine. They carry dishes from both Chongqing and Tianjin styles. It’s a bit oily but that’s pretty much always the case at any Chinese joint. The diced beef with garlic is their signature dish that you don’t wanna miss. The beef is real tender and flavorful. I’ve been coming here since they first opened and it’s always a decent experience whenever I come back. Will definitely visit again.

Strong flavors? Sufficient spiciness? True to their garlicky name? Check check check! Wanting to try something new in San Jose, Yelp led us to Golden Garlic and did not disappoint! Looking over their menu, you'll find it sufficiently marked with little chili peppers, but fear not, it's not so much spicy as it is fragrant in a variety of spices. We began our meal with jelly noodles with chili sauce. This is a very popular street food and I thought Golden Garlic did theirs very well. For those unfamiliar, the jelly noodles or "liangfen" is made of a starch powder (pea, sweet potato, or mung bean are common) then cut into strips. It is then generously submerged in a chili pepper sauce. Golden Garlic's chili pepper sauce is second to none in my opinion. It was so fragrant with a distinct garlic flavor, subtle nuttiness, and subtle smokiness. We admittedly did not eat all of the jelly noodles because we wanted to keep the chili sauce! Next came the Zha Jiang Noodles which were good and chewy. You can control the amount of soybean paste you add, but I'd say to just go for it. Usually, I'm accustomed to this dish having just a little meat or other extras but it was mostly julienned cucumbers and the sauce. No complaints though. Then came our entrees. We opted to try a little bit of everything - the famed beef with golden garlic, the steamed pork ribs in lotus leaves, cauliflower with ham, and to round it all out, house dumplings. From best to worse, the pork ribs were absolutely delicious. Steamed to submission, even the bones were softened. Flavors were on point, but I opted to use some of the chili sauce from the jelly noodles dish and I thought it was sooo good! Next, the cauliflower. I thought the dish was very good - cauliflower was cooked perfectly, but I was a little disappointed they used Chinese sausage instead of ham (as advertised) which would have made this dish a little more special in my opinion. Next, the dumplings. I thought the filling was very dense and the dumpling skin was on the thicker side. Still, they were pretty good. The only dish that was sadly mildly inedible was the beef and garlic. It was very heavy handed on salt and definitely needed to be accompanied by rice to temper it out. We barely touched this dish, but we all loved the ample cloves of garlic and nibbled on those throughout this meal! Overall, it was a good and filling meal. We would welcome a return!

Local restaurant serving very authentic Tianjin and szechuan food. Some dishes are spicy. Flavor is very good, but some are very local and not familiar to me. Good to come with a large party Must order the house made jelly noodle in chili sauce.One of best items on the menu. Take the extra chili sauce home and put it on rice or noodles. They do serve some bottle beer which goes well with the food.

The foods were amazing! but i dont really like the way they prepared twin-cooked pork.

Fair price, food is good(pretty good, some are not absolute authentic though), and has some dishes I rarely see in other restaurants. Will come back.