New Happy Garden Restaurant

New Happy Garden has been the Chinese takeout counter at the edge of Elora Village since 2010, working out of a storefront on Wellington Road 7. It is built for pickup rather than a sit-down night — order online or by phone, collect, and take it home — and the menu is wide enough that it has become the village's default weeknight Chinese order rather than a special-occasion stop. Parking sits right out front in the Village Inn lot, which suits a place whose whole rhythm is pull up, grab the order, and go. With sixteen years behind the counter, it has settled into being the town's reliable Chinese order.

The menu reads like a full Canadian-Chinese map. Two dishes carry the house name: the New Happy Garden Soup, a loaded war wonton, and the New Happy Garden Fried Rice, built with spicy chicken and shrimp. Around them sits the familiar spread — Chicken Wings with General Tso Sauce, General Tao Chicken, Lemon Chicken, Sweet & Sour Chicken Balls, Singapore Style Noodles in curry sauce, Shanghai Chow Mein, and Ma Po Tofu. The appetizer wings come four ways — deep fried, honey garlic, General Tso, and tossed in a spicy sauce — alongside pan-fried dumplings and deep fried mushrooms. The chicken section runs deeper into sesame and orange, the beef section into almonds-and-vegetables and a green-pepper black bean version, and the rest spreads across seafood, chop suey, egg foo young, sweet-and-sour pork, BBQ pork and rice boxes.

The kitchen keeps a real meat-free lane too. A Curry Tofu with mixed vegetables and the Ma Po Tofu anchor it, and the vegetarian family dinners run the same Dinner for Two through Dinner for Six structure as the regular sets, swapping in vegetable fried rice and an egg roll. Beyond the tofu dishes, the menu carries vegetable chop suey, a mixed-vegetable lo mein and vegetable Shanghai noodles, so a mixed table — some meat, some not — can order off one menu without anyone settling.

Where the menu earns its keep is in how it's structured for the way people actually order Chinese takeout. The lunch specials are the clearest value: seven of them at $12.99, available Monday and Wednesday through Saturday from 11:30 to three, each pairing wonton soup or an egg roll with a main over rice or noodles. Above that sit the combination plates and the scaled family dinners — Dinner for Two through Dinner for Six, with a Supper Family Dinner for Four that bundles chicken chop suey, sweet-and-sour chicken balls, beef with broccoli and chicken fried rice. For a crowd, the party trays handle volume: wings, fried rice, beef with broccoli, lo mein, lemon and sesame chicken all come tray-sized, priced from the mid-thirties up.

New Happy Garden keeps takeout hours — Monday and Wednesday through Saturday from late morning to evening, Sunday afternoon onward, closed Tuesdays — with ordering through its own site and a kitchen that turns pickup orders around quickly. It isn't trying to be a destination, and doesn't need to be. On a weeknight when dinner comes down to a phone call and a full bag of containers, that practical, wide-menu reliability is the whole point.