Ren’s Garden

Your average «Americanized» Chinese restaurant, really.
The food here is exactly that — average, if not slightly below. Avoid most of the fried dishes, they don’t do a very good job draining the food before boxing it, resulting in extremely greasy lunches — which says a lot, considering Chinese food is often quite greasy to begin with. The fried rice is pretty decent here, and the prices are hard to beat at around 5.35 for a lunch special (at the time of this writing). The hot and sour soup, one of my favorite soups, would actually be OK as well, if not for — you guessed it — pools of grease on top of it. Honestly, this place would be a solid 3 stars if not for the damn grease, since the food itself tastes as good as any of the other 5 million generic Chinese restaurants in the area.
Aside from the mediocre food, the restaurant itself is really quirky. There’s only 1 – 2 tables to sit at, with the rest of the front end being taken up by boxes of random junk for sale. It’s like walking into a dollar store that serves food — anything from scarves, hats, batteries, bras, sunglasses, and other totally random knick-​knacks can be found for sale in the front. It’s… really odd.
All that being said, I find myself eating here more often than I’d like, if only because it’s down the street from where I work. If not for how close it was, I’d probably not bother coming back.

The food is just okay at Ren’s. We order their food every few months when we don’t have time to run to Little Silver or Long Branch. It is not very good but it is not too bad.
Avoid getting the eggplant and garlic sauce — they don’t know how to cook it as it comes out raw.
Their chicken and broccoli is good but nothing special.

A great, underrated Chinese food place in the West Long Branch area. I went here because I go to Monmouth and my friend and I were looking for a different place than Ming Ying to go to. We checked out the lunch specials and they were VERY cheap– 5.35 for a Sesame Chicken lunch special. We went to pick up and it was quite small on the inside– definitely a classic Chinese place, not streamlined like Ming Ying (although I do love the place!). My lunch special had pork fried rice and a nice portion of chicken. What I liked was that i got an assortment of fresh vegetables with the meal. Usually when I get a lunch special with something such as Sesame or General Tso’s it just comes with the chicken. But my order came with fresh broccoli, baby corn, and assorted Chinese vegetables. I felt like this was a more «homestyle» Chinese place, if you will. I really enjoyed Ren’s Garden and think it is one of the best places to eat in the Monmouth County area. A very underrated gem!

Fast, great lunch take out menu!