Bo Bo Garden

Bo Bo Garden was good a long time, then it sucked ass, then miraculously got good again... It was obviously due to chef changes. Fast forward another year or two and it's time to see what's going on again here. The place hasn't changed, looks exactly the same inside as the last visit which was many moons again. The menu made some slight changes but overall still the same. They're known for their claypots and rice casseroles with a few outstanding Chino dishes as well.
Round eyes has put this joint on their radar for the last couple of years, so you will see more whities in here... Hopefully, they haven't dumb down much of the menu to adjust for the clientele. Only way to find out is to check it out again. Walked in, first thing I see is a big table of round eyes, dead give away was the BYOB bots of cheap wine scattered around the table and bleached blond hair and excessive chalky elbow skin dangling... Oh, yeah, I'm hungry now...

Beef Strips and Tendon. Lost in translation once again, but I guess it's better than deep fried crap or fuck the vagina until it explodes translation found on many other Chino menus. This dish of offalness was good with bits of stomach, tripe, kidney and liver... But no tendon was found.  

Crispy Mapo Tofu. This was one of the best dishes here, but now it has been dumb down to a new level. Yes, the flash fried crispy tofu is still really good but the mapo sauce was not spicy at all, it's more like a sweet cloying HFCS brown sauce. The minced pork bits were few and far between. The crispy tofu cubes still rocks but everything else has become totally round eyed.

Sweet & Sour Crispy Spare Ribs. The last time I had these, they were fucking outrageous, great crispy crust, tender meat inside with the Chinese style brown sweet & sour sauce... Tonight, it was a total cracker special. The spare rib chunks were crispy and a bit chewy but the nuclear orange cloying sweet & sour sauce was a hat tip to the orange chicken found at Panda Express. The spare ribs weren't bad but that shitty canned sauce was a total letdown to our tribe and ruined the integrity of this dish.

Chinese Preserved Meat with Taro. The Chinese sausage and bacon were good as expected but the large chunks of taro were a bit chalky which was surprising since they usually do it right, needs to be cooked down a bit more and the broth was almost flavorless. This was another reason why not to stray off the path and stick with the pork belly and pickled mustard, pork and eggplant, spare rib with black bean or bone-in chicken chunk with sausage and shrooms.

Braised Yee Mein. Once again straying off from the classic favorite of beef chowfun and you'll get fucked again with this fake Yee mein dish. They basically used lo mein noodles vs. the real flatter yee mein which has more of a curl to it and chewier. This dish was so Americanized that round eyes would even laugh at how bad it was. Pathetic.

Looks like they strayed down the shitty path again... Who knows who's cooking back there anymore but let the evidence show that the cook may have possibly came from Panda Express. The servers are attentive but they could care less to tell you which dish is good that night or what dish to avoid.
Stick with the safer Chinese dishes like the claypots and the ones with rice (casserole rice), congee, wonton noodle soup and some noodle dishes, that's what they do best here. Being adventurous with authentic dishes here will only lead to disappointment. Pouch will prolly not be back for awhile.

5181 Buford Hwy NE
Doraville, GA 30340
678-547-1881