Jade Garden

Regina Abola

4.0

CONCEPTIn Chinese culture, the jade stone is revered as a symbol of purity and purification. It is also the most precious of all in value. The restaurant Jade Garden, located in the Glorietta 1 complex, reflects these concepts through a "Chinese fine dining experience". It brings to customers authentic mainland cuisine fit for an emperor.ENVIRONMENTThis isn't the mom-and-pop restaurant you're used to eating in with the family. From the moment you enter, the extravagance of Chinese dynasties is overwhelming. Shiny marble mesh with the jade-colored carpeted floor from the reception to the dining area. The first few tables are modern booths with a simple set up. A glass panel with jade ornaments separates the dining area from the modern look to the more authentic section. Here, the predominantly wooden walls frame the simple red-white dining tables (set up lauriat style with a large glass Lazy Susan) and red, green, or white chairs.A central jade chandelier drives home the ambience of the restaurant. Along with pin lights, modern plastic-glass lanterns brighten the very warm colors of the restaurant. Towards the rear end of the dining area, guóhuàs (Chinese paintings) decorate the walls with a touch of native authenticity.They can also accommodate private events in one of their four function rooms that have a similar template to the main dining area. 3 rooms can hold around 50 guests maximum, while 1 can hold 20.In all, the maximum capacity of Jade Garden is 350 pax if it was fully packed. That's a large floor space!SERVICE & CLEANLINESSWhenever our family visits here for special occasions (usually Sunday lunch), a reservation is a must because of the customer influx. I kid you not, a weekend lunch sees the main dining area packed with around 120 diners without any private events.The staff are ready with a team of 20 servers including 2 captains, an ample ratio considering how packed this place can get. Because of this orders are served in relatively quick fashion. 10 minutes is too long.Because of this cleanliness is not an issue overall. Despite being carpeted, the main dining area smells and looks clean. The function rooms need some work, though, as it smelled kinda stuffy for a couple of minutes after opening. It settled down after a while, but yeah they might want to clean it up a bit in the future.FOODEven with its wide array of delicious Chinese cuisine, the main attraction of Jade Garden is its famous Barbecued Peking Duck. It's Php 2,600 for a whole, which the captain of the servers masterfully slices into thin, juicy strips of brown duck meat, including the skin.One way to eat it is to place it in a spring roll wrapper combined with onion leeks and sweet hoisin sauce (served along with the meat) for an oriental take on the roast duck sandwich. I can only describe its taste as deliciously delicate.If your family fancies it as well, just add Php 380 to have the duck made a second way. They leave some of the duck after serving the first way and make the remaining meat into a duck stir fry. I'll admit it's my least favorite. I prefer the oriental duck sandwich, thank you very much.Over the years, we've also tried their other menu items. They are really, really good. They always open your appetite with tasty fried crackers. Next comes spinach soup with fresh crab meat (Php 960). The golden prawns with salted egg is noteworthy (Php 1,360), but I can only eat one because it's so rich in flavor. Their crispy noodles in seafood are good too (Php 1,040).The trick to ordering here if you're a large party (like more than 10 pax) is to get a set of pre-listed food, which definitely includes their famous Peking Duck. The prices I listed above are for large orders. You can see the rest of the prices on their website website.OVERALLI've said a lot about Jade Garden so far, so I'll add just one more description: "Classy". It's really pricey, but this is the best Chinese food I've tasted so far.

Ghislynne Dei-Anne Andaya

3.0

For those of you who remember Peking Garden before it got bombed/burned, that is where Jade Garden is now. (The Fil-Chi communtiy remembers.) We commemorated my great-grandfather's death anniversary here. Chinese parties usually call for a panto-style meal, wherein each kind of meat is served. We had the pumpkin soup, salted fish fried rice, crab with scrambled egg white, peking duck wrap, papatim with steamed kua bao and prawns among other things. We must have had about 10-12 different courses. The food was relatively good, but not too exceptional. It's traditional southeastern Chinese cuisine. Service could have been better. The staff seems overwhelmed. I had difficulty flagging down some waiters. Might have been because of the layout. There were wood and glass dividers obscuring the view of some tables.

Vina Costuna

3.0

The place has exquisite interiors, luxurious and opulent, a great feeling of extravagance (not in a bad way). The food on the other hand was lackluster and above average at best. What we had included the following, suckling pig combination (3 ways) (so so), spinach with seafood soup (taste was delicate, yet lacking), barbecued Peking duck (sadly they duck skin was not served at the same time as the rolls, leaving much taste to be sought after), sauteed prawns in satay sauce, oil simmered lapu lapu (fish was fresh, and sauce was good), seasonal vegetables with abalone mushroom (they should have explained that there was no abalone as usual version of the dish would have both abalone and mushrooms), fried crab with spring onion (good), fried misua, chilled mango sago (typical).