Pork stuffed pan fried buns at Mimi Garden, Photo by Ryan Baker.
Recently, The Woodlands area has been experiencing an influx of new East Asian restaurants. There has especially been a growth in the number of more traditional Chinese restaurants. One that has been particularly popular is Mimi Garden, located at 8021 Research Forest. The menu offers a variety of dim sum, and other Cantonese dishes with influences from Taiwanese, Sichuan and American-Chinese cuisine.
Mimi Garden first opened in mid-December. Despite opening with generally positive reviews and maintaining a mostly busy restaurant, the owner, Shan Su was unhappy with the quality and consistency of the food being served at his restaurant. By February, changes were being made, including bringing in a new chef and refocusing the menu, and Houston Food Finder was invited to try out the new items.
While there are some hints of Taiwanese, Sichuan and Chinese-American influence on the menu, the revamped offerings of the restaurant center around dim sum, the Chinese equivalent to tapas or small bites. Having dined at Mimi Garden half a dozen times since opening, we have a lot of food to share with you, so sit tight.
As stated before dim sum is the heart of the menu. Visitors from earlier in Mimi Garden’s run will notice a drastic difference, both in the variety offered and the seasoning of the items previously available. In contrast to the bolder recipes offered at the start, the new recipes showcase what can best be described as milder but textbook flavors, making this a great opportunity to get acquainted (or reacquainted) with Mimi Garden. For many people, dim sum can be hard to approach, and our goal is to share a great restaurant and help you feel confident in trying new food!
Dumpling is a broad term, most regularly (in Chinese cuisine at least) associated with jiaozi. Small, half-moon shaped pouches of dough are pinched shut and stuffed with various fillings before being pan- or deep-fried , boiled or steamed. The restaurant has an extensive variety of dumplings . For steamed options, there is chicken, veggie and pork and cuttlefish inside of wrappers dyed with cuttlefish ink. Ink infusions, in general, can be on the saltier side, but in the case of dim sum, the added flavor can be a plus. As delightful as the steamed dumplings are, the texture of the pan-fried make these a must-order. Available in beef or pork (don’t underestimate the flavor of pork), the pan-fried dumplings are firmer and have a crispy lattice, making the plate picture-perfect while adding crunch and changing very little about the taste.
Mimi Garden serves three varieties of the ever-popular Xiao Long Bao (soup dumplings) — pork, pork and shrimp, and crab and pork. As the name suggests, these are small, piping-hot pockets of soup and meat. We’ve not tried these since the new chef was hired, but thought you should know these are available.
I judge all dim sum spots on the quality of the shumai (shaomai on the menu). This bite-sized, open-faced dumpling variant is wrapped in dough that gains chewiness and a unique yellow color from either an alkaline or lye water solution. Then, it’s filled with minced pork, shrimp and (usually) mushrooms, creating a dense but springy texture. The dim sum menu also features many other classic dim sum including lotus leaf-wrapped sticky rice, har gow/cau (shrimp dumplings) and thick steam buns.
Outside of the small plates (well, baskets, really), there are plenty of other dishes to consider.. The appetizer page is small, but features some unique items, including seaweed and beancurd in vinegar dressing, wood ear mushroom salad, soy noodle salad and seaweed and beancurd. Mimi Garden also has plenty of American-Chinese mainstays such as crab rangoon, fried spring rolls, kung pao and General Tso’s chicken. There are also crispy beef rolls — beef, cilantro and cucumbers wrapped in a scallion pancake and pan-fried.
The Chinese eatery has a well-executed deep-fried selection as well. Cheese-stuffed shrimp balls, salt and pepper wings, Tornado Fries, Taiwanese popcorn chicken with basil and my favorite on the list, swan-durian pastries. If you’ve been curious about trying durian, this is a great way to approach the uniquely aromatic fruit. The crisp-fried thousand layer cake on the outside of the fruit adds a few layers to the texture, and the cooking process dulls the intensity of the durian’s natural flavor, making this one of the more enjoyable desserts on the menu (despite not being technically considered a dessert).
Speaking of desserts: Mimi Garden sports one of the largest dessert menus that I’ve seen at a Chinese restaurant. There are multiple steamed dumpling varieties, including taro xiaolongbao, golden egg custard buns and red bean buns. There are also brown sugar sticky rice cakes and a few milk tea options.
Noodle dishes are always my favorite on any menu, and the noodles with minced pork in soy bean sauce are a regular order for me. It consists of a hearty, meat sauce — think Texas-style chili but with East Asian flavors — on a bed of thick, delicious noodles. Additionally, Mimi Garden serves a few spicy soups, wonton soups and hot and sour.
Dim sum and Cantonese food in general is having a resurgence in Houston. However, the Spring-Woodlands area has been a desert for quality, traditional Chinese dishes, making Mimi Garden a very welcome, delicious addition to the area!
Mimi Garden is open daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. The restaurant also has a membership program for frequent customers which includes a significant discount on your birthday.
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