A door sign at New Garden restaurant on South Central Avenue broke the news that regulars had dreaded for years: after 84 years, South Phoenix's oldest Chinese restaurant is shutting its doors for good. The restaurant will close within two weeks, though no exact final service date has been set.
New Garden opened in 1942, founded by Kam Yee Tse, and is now located on South Central Avenue, according to Phoenix New Times. Tse handed the restaurant off to family members in the 1980s, and it has been run by generations of his family since. Tse himself died in 2018. A staff member confirmed to the paper that the closure would happen within two weeks, though no exact last service day was known.
The restaurant sits at 823 S. Central Ave., inside a brick building painted rusty terracotta near the corner of Central Avenue and Hadley Street — a stretch once known as the valley's historic Chinatown, south of downtown Phoenix. By 2022, that Chinatown had largely vanished; the Sing High Chop Suey House, described as its last vestige, had already closed in 2018, according to PHX Rail Food. The outlet also noted that by then, the region's biggest concentration of Chinese restaurants had shifted 15 miles east to the Mesa Asian District.
A Menu Built on Comfort and Consistency
New Garden built its reputation on Americanized Cantonese cooking — chop suey, chow mein, egg foo young, fried rice, noodles and egg drop soup among the staples, per the same report from PHX Rail Food. Its massive egg rolls and savory pork noodles earned loyal fans over the decades, and azcentral.com has described the oversized deep-fried egg roll as the restaurant's signature dish.
That consistency is what kept families coming back for generations. Rachel Celaya, a 37-year-old South Phoenix resident, has eaten at New Garden since childhood and remembers her father taking her there on Friday nights, handing her jukebox money while the family ate. She and her siblings later brought their own children, and her extended family group now numbers 15 people when they dine together, Phoenix New Times reports. Staff knew her takeout order by heart — beef and broccoli, no onions — and once slipped an extra carton of egg drop soup into her bag.
Celaya learned the restaurant was closing from her daughter, who had seen it on social media, and she visited New Garden with her grandmother on Tuesday afternoon. She told the paper she is sad and carries many memories tied to the place. Nicolette Bobadilla, another longtime customer, recalled the owners greeting diners with warm tea and kindness, and said many families share good memories there and feel the same sadness watching it close.
Viral Attention and Unanswered Questions
Word of the closure spread quickly as local food influencer Diane Puro Guanajuato shared news of New Garden's impending exit; her dining video had gone viral two years earlier. The restaurant is expected to close within two weeks, though the paper has not been able to reach the restaurant's owner, and the exact reason behind the shutdown remains unclear.
New Garden also weathered years of disruption from South Central Avenue light-rail expansion construction, which began in 2019 and did not open to riders until June 2025, according to the same Phoenix New Times account. Whether that six-year construction window played any role in the restaurant's decision to close was not addressed in the reporting.
Part of a Broader Wave of Closures
New Garden's exit adds to a string of restaurant losses across Phoenix this year. The Old Tortilla Factory closed in July, and Cafe Lalibela shut down in September, per Phoenix New Times. Scott's Generations, a New York-style deli that Scott Snyder and his late father, Gene, opened in 1989 after moving to Arizona, is set to close later in October as well — the business had grown into a third-generation operation once Snyder's son, Ross, became a partner, according to azfamily.com.
The pressures behind these closures echo a pattern seen across metro Phoenix's oldest food businesses: rising ingredient costs, narrow profit margins and competition from national chains, azfamily.com has reported. Not every historic spot has met the same fate — MacAlpine's Diner & Soda Fountain, recognized as the oldest food establishment in metro Phoenix and housed in a building that first opened as Birch's 7th Street Pharmacy in 1929, sat shuttered for four years during the pandemic before owner Monica Heizenrader and her husband bought the building and reopened it with her daughters to preserve its heritage.
No word has emerged on what might become of New Garden's building once the restaurant serves its final meals. For now, longtime customers like Celaya and Bobadilla are left savoring what visits remain, carrying out one more order of chop suey or egg drop soup from a kitchen that has fed South Phoenix families for 84 years.
