Bobo's not clowning around

Bobo Garden

5181 Buford Highway Northeast

Doraville, GA

(678) 547-1881

Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce

Buford Highway north and east of Atlanta is the most delicious road in the Atlanta Area. There are restaurants and grocery stores of all ethnicities on this road, with roots from Europe, Asia, Africa, and Central and South Americas. There is even the ubiquitous American fast food. Where to go and what to eat on Buford Hwy? Well, I did not have a GPS at the time, I have a dumb phone (opposed to a smart phone, but my phone isn't really dumb, it just is an old fashioned cell phone) and I did not have any access to browsing the internet for good suggestions to eat on Buford Hwy. So, I did my old analog method and drove down Buford Hwy and looked to see what I could see.

I started in Duluth and drove the 20 miles of Buford Hwy down towards Atlanta. I started about 7:45 pm in Duluth, and I wanted Chinese, Cantonese really, food. I looked at many restaurants to see how many cars were out front, and if people were going in and out of the restaurant. There was one restaurant that had a lot of cars out front, there were people going into the restaurant, and people coming out with to-go boxes of food. While other restaurants were winding down at about 8:45 pm, Bobo Garden was hopping with diners.

The restaurant used to be a Korean BBQ restaurant with each table with a grill station embedded into each table, and exhaust hoods over the grills. I don't think that this Chinese restaurant uses the BBQ grill portion of the tables anymore, but they did buy the restaurant as it with the tables and they use the tables as tables. The menu is definitely Cantonese style foods. There are squid, seafood, fresh seafood from the tanks of fresh seafood along the back wall, there are clay pot dishes, there are hot pot dishes, there are congee rice soup dishes, and more. The menu has tripe and duck tongue dishes, which I would not choose, but I know that many of my older relatives really enjoy Cantonese style slow cooked clay pot tripe. There are some seemingly Americanized dishes including vegetables and stir fried foods, but those too seemed are rooted in Cantonese cuisine, not American fast food. The waitstaff mostly speaks in Chinese, and there was only one waiter who spoke some English, and he was the one who was told to wait on me, as I speak very little to no Chinese. What I am trying to say is, that Bobo Garden I believe is the real deal Cantonese style restaurant, and you are not going to get any Americanized meal here.

Unfortunately, it was only me dining, so I only ordered 2 dishes, one Chinese broccoli and a salted preserved duck egg and pork dish. I should have gotten a clay pot dish too, but I how much can one eat? The waiter did steer me to the pork dish, but I think he did it because it was the most mild and most recognizable dish to someone who doesn't know real Cantonese food. The pork dish was a good dish, but a little ordinary, so next time, I will likely try a clay pot dish like slow cooked Chinese preserved meats with taro root and garlic, Cantonese duck, or a seafood dish made with seafood from one of the seafood tanks. There are some tasty looking dishes now that I found the Bobo Facebook page that you could not possibly get in an Americanized Chinese restaurant, rather only in a real Cantonese style restaurant. On Yelp and Urbanspoon, Bobo Garden has good reviews, and everyone says this is an authentic Cantonese style restaurant. Even one person who lives in a Chinese food void (small town Alabama) orders food from here and takes it home on ice to freeze and eat later. Brilliant. Next time, I am bringing a cooler, blue ice, baggies and plastic containers.

Doraville, GA, I can't wait to see you again! I can't wait for the deliciousness of Bobo Garden!