The 411 on Rose Garden Uptown #
Address: 1901 San Pablo Ave
Oakland, CA
Website: https://www.rosegardenuptown.org/
Phone: 510-817-4811
The Vibe: I didn’t think I’d be reviewing Rose Garden Uptown when I met a friend there for lunch last month. I thought I’d just kick back, relax, and catch up with her. But I knew as soon as I entered this brightly colored restaurant that I had to capture this meal, as I expected the food would be just as vibrant as the decor.
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Rose Garden Uptown is a Laotian & Thai restaurant, featuring many dishes common to that region but also Californian ingredients. They offer table service, but the most business was to-go orders while we dined.
From that interior, you can view their mix of modern-day Instagram aesthetics and architecture with more traditional decorated woven trays on the walls and pictures of the menu items that’s nostalgic of many Asian restaurants that have been thriving in their communities for decades and displaying their dishes in the same way. An appealing combination of new and old to me, just like the menu and ingredients. And the pretty sharing plates also brightened my mood.
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My Take on Rose Garden Uptown #
The Food: We started with the Laotian spring rolls, filled with avocado, carrots, rice noodles, and lettuce.
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The two sauces—one peanut and one mildly sweet and spicy—provided the most flavor for the dish. I think I may not be a big spring roll fan, preferring more herbs and sauces mixed into the filling, but those sauces did a lot to jazz these ones up. And they had generous helpings of the ingredients as well.
Next came the sweet corn salad with carrots, tomatoes, peanuts, green beans, garlic, lime juice, and a mild chili.
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I love corn, so I expected to love this dish … and I did! Typically, I go for “hot” when asked for a spice level choice, but my friend was right to go with mild here. That added just enough of a kick to complement the corn’s sweetness. The ingredients had a satisfying variety of flavors, textures, and crunch.
We aimed for Rose Garden Uptown’s Laotian specialties for our second dish, settling on the mok pa. That’s catfish steamed in a banana leaf with herbs.
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It was my first mok pa, and I did not know if I was supposed to treat the lettuce as lettuce wraps, so I went ahead and did so. I scooped catfish into the small leaves, added cilantro and onions, and really enjoyed those flavors and textures all together. The catfish was soft and soothing, and the herbs cooked with it imparted a wonderful freshness. I will definitely order mok pa again.
Would I Go Back? Sure! Rose Garden Uptown has a large menu that I’d love to explore more. Not to mention four types of larb—oh wait, I mean laab! I have just learned that “larb” refers to any chopped meat salad while “laab” is the particular recipe for chopped meat salads in Northern Thailand that we commonly think of here as larb. Rose Garden offers pork, chicken, duck, and beef laab, with the latter available raw and with “bile” mixed in, in the traditional Northern Thailand style. I may not be brave enough for that option, but I want to try the duck, for sure. And the Laotian beef jerky!
Yes, I will be back.
Visited October 2025.
