The Garden Restuarant At Moody Gardens

This - to my knowledge - is the only sit down restaurant in Moody Gardens. There's a hostess and waitresses and they do have a buffet ($25 per person) as well as a menu you could order from. I consider it as a casual establishment.As with most eateries located in a tourist location, it's overpriced. We expected that, but we still went because of our diets. We're allium-free vegetarians (alliums includes onions and garlic) and the youngest member has a number of food allergies. Our best bet would be a restaurant. We ate here 2 times during our 2 days there.After asking the waitress and a few trips to the kitchen, we figured we could only have the:AVOCADO SALAD - Your typical salad topped with avocado (4-5 slices) with half of a sliced hard boiled egg. This is typically served with your choice of a meat salad (chicken and something else meaty) and dressing, both of which we opted out of. They do not have a vegetarian protein option other than eggs... of which they didn't give us more of but did not reduce the cost. They also do not have olive oil! We only ordered this once. This was $15. WRAP - a salad with dried cranberries wrapped in a large wheat flour tortilla with a side of fries or potato chips and a pickle spear on top of an ornamental leaf of lettuce. It comes with a slice of American cheese inside - the ones packaged individually in plastic, that probably can't even be counted as real cheese. This is also typically served with grilled meat of your choice, which we opted out of. As with the salad, there is no vegetarian protein option. This doesn't come with an egg, either. I think the cranberries and pickle saved this for me. I love it with fries (which we got the first time). The second time, though I did confirm on fries, they gave us chips. Which... I guess? An easier choice when it was busy. But still not what we ordered. This was $15.KIDS MACARONI AND CHEESE - standard Mac and cheese for kids with sauce that is in the runny side. My daughter ordered this both of our visits and she finished the entire plate EVERY TIME, which was amazing to us. She normally only picks at things. Out of everything we ordered, I ind shelling out $6 for this.SAUTÉED VEGETABLES - the only thing our youngest could have. It included zucchini, yellow squash, carrots, and mushrooms lightly seasoned with salt, pepper, thyme and oregano. I actually enjoyed this. It was simple and good and I don't mind the $6 to get it....Which was what we ordered.The staff here are there to do their job and are generally nice. They'll answer questions - to a point (at one moment, she seemed reluctant to go back to ask more) - but don't necessarily go above and beyond. The first visit, they were waiting for us to finish (we had a late lunch that was close to 4 pm). Better service during slow hours because at least they weren't rushed. Our second visit was during peak lunch time and our waitress seemed a bit overwhelmed and forgot that we needed a spoon despite passing us 3 times. We ended up getting one ourselves from the buffet. I'm amazed there are still restaurants - especially one at a tourist attraction - that still doesn't offer decent vegetarian options/substitutions. Also, I'm sorry, but you can't even merit an "okay" (3 stars) if you serve salads but don't even have olive oil. That is why I can only give them 2 stars. They do seem to be busy, but if you're at Moody Gardens, it's not like you have much of a choice. Their buffet seems like your typical American buffet... not worth it to us for $25. We can probably only eat 30% of it at the most. At least we can have a few healthier meals because of our limited options here, haha. No wonder there's a stereotype of vegetarians eating only rabbit food! (I would believe it if I didn't know better and watched us eat what we ate.)

Our first time visiting Moody Gardens. Nice hotel on-site, but even better, lovely dining experience on the hotel's top floor. We arrived for a 5:30pm reservation and were seated at a corner window table by the maitre d, Brian, a lovely , kind gentleman with a twinkle in his eye.Our waiter, Ancelvo, was super attentive, knowledgeable and helpful, but most of all, had an absolute wickedly charming wit which we loved which made our dining experience even more wonderful. My husband and I are an older couple and we shared the wedge salad and, for our main course, the bone-in ribeye steak with an addition of king crab legs and escalloped potatoes. The chef kindly split the salad and steak for us doing a perfect split onto separate plates. We had a California Cabernet Sauvignon " Decoy" which was very good. No room for dessert but they had an extensive list and we were sorry we just couldn't eat another bite. This was the highlight of our stay at this hotel and would come back in a snap the next time we visit.

A decent restaurant, except it's way overpriced but I guess that's to be expected in an amusement park.The portion sizes are pretty large and the food is decent.I definitely think that ordering restaurant food is better quality than the buffet.The shrimp salad avocado salad was not bad, the veggies weren't super fresh but my expectations were pretty low.The gumbo was a bit salty in my opinion.

Some of the worst food we've ever had, worse than Lubys or Golden Corral by far. We paid quite a bit for a buffet that was bland and with few selections. The pasta sauce looked like they took a cup of sauce and diluted it with a gallon of water.

Food: Good portions, speedy delivery, price is slightly on the high sideThe bad: Angela was our hostess and waitress who immediately did a sales pitch about the buffet the minute we were seated down. We opted for a la carte and initially the orders came in complete & in a timely manner. But the drinks refill was obviously forgotten that after waiting for a long period, we had to flag down another waiter ( Robert) who immediately notified Angela of our refill request. When the refill came, we also asked for the bill and Angela made a rude inappropriate remark " I already have the check since y'all are in a hurry"We told her we were not in a hurry but we pretty much lost our patience with all that wait. We also overheard her complain to the hostess that she does not like customers who do not get the buffet & to make sure they get the buffet. Her tip was equivalent to her poor service.

Eh, lunch buffet looked a little depressing- in all fairness I could have gotten there a bit late - so i decided to order from the menu. I figured this food would be better than eating super unhealthy around the stands - so i got a salad and a coffee to recharge ... salad wasn't the freshest (almost tasted like i could taste what they used to clean the vegetables in the back -- the coffee was really good though.

Absolutely HORRIBLE! We were a family of 6. While the waitress went to get our drinks we walked up to the buffet to check it out. There were flies sitting on the desserts, bread, and salad items The Roast was Grey, the Raviolis were covered in corn‍ The 3 Special Salads all had Raisins in them. The flies did it for us! We paid for drinks and left! Never again!

The buffet is a poor selection and poor quality. The hostess is consistently rude and obviously foes not want to be bothered by guests. Prefers chatting with co workers.

We got the buffet and I couldn't even finish this first plate .The food is bad the brisket was cooked with out any flavor and feel like they just put the sauce on top.The Mac feel water down doesn't even taste Like cheese.Beans same as meat no taste .Save your money .The sad thing is they they should put more edgy on the menu is a nice place located on a good hotel why is the food so bad. Won't go back.

Had Thanksgiving there today and was beyond disappointed...vegetables were mostly raw, asparagus was like sticks they were so woody...waited 20 minutes to get our drink orders taken at the table, bread was all hard and dry...I could have had a better meal at Golden Corral and for a LOT less money.