Jade Garden

Restaurant looks relatively clean and nice from the outside, but the food disappoints. Went in for a lunch special and although it presented well something just didn’t taste right. There are better options out there for the price. Try R House in the same shopping center.

The only good dish for lunch special is Hong Shao Whole Fish. If you order beef dish for lunch special, watch out for a dish that has more vegetable than beef.
The first time I dined in for lunch, the waitress told us that they ran out of basil for one of the dishes I ordered. A little surprised that they don’t have enough cooking materials in stock. Overall the experience is alright.
By the way, their restrooms are full of moldy smell. Not sure if that is a health violation.

Husband and I can never decide where to eat. We were about to go to East Wall but decided to see what the other new restaurants had to offer. It was too cold and I was holding on to my kid so I couldn’t Unilocal.Well hell if I had seen the bad reviews I would have stayed away! It was that damn $ 18.88 for 2 lobsters that drew us in. Yeah we didn’t know there was a catch of ordering 2 other dishes with it that weren’t rice or noodles. So that pissed me off a bit. They need to freaking advertise like Vinh Hoa does! So we ended up getting Mapo tofu and guy suggested the snow pea leaves in garlic sauce. Lobster was a nice presentation. Seemed a little too liquid-​y. Hubby was wondering if maybe they had jipped up on some of the meat in the body. Mapo tofu tasted bland. I tried pouring the sauce over my rice thinking it would give me more flavor but it didn’t. Snow-​pea leaves. Meh. Tasted more steamed than stir-​fried. Again it just tasted bland. No hint of garlic at all. And that dish was $ 13! Our bill came out to be $ 56 including a wonton soup. Should have just went to Kim Son buffet. Never playing Russian Roulette with restaurants anymore. We got shot in our pockets. :P

Came here with a group of five for lunch on a weekday. It was almost empty when we first arrived. The dining room is nicely decorated and the ambiance is similar to many Chinese restaurants where lots of Chinese families gather with their relatives for a special dinner. Live seafood tanks are displayed in the back teeming with a variety of shrimp, fish, and crabs.
Since we were here for lunch, we took advantage of their great lunch specials! They have two menus for it. One side had American Chinese food, and the other side had more authentic dishes. There’s a good assortment to choose from. These weren’t small portions either like some places offer for lunch, and at $ 5.99, it’s quite steal! Dinner is noticeably more expensive and seem to average out at about $ 13 a plate. There’s also some more unique offerings for dinner like abalone, sea cucumber, conch, jellyfish, and baby cow ribs. Of course you have familiar favorite too like congee, sizzling plates, hot pots, several varieties of fish, and Peking duck. The menu is rather extensive with a little bit of everything including Hunan, Szechuan, and I even spotted a Vietnamese style dish.
For lunch we ended up doing a sort of family style setup. I sampled some sort of whole fried fish, scrambled eggs with shrimp, sautéed baby bok choy, and salt toasted pork chop. Each dish was very tasty! The scrambled eggs contained plump, large, perfectly cooked shrimp. Dab a bit of Sriracha on it, and oh goodness this simple dish becomes very yummy! Both the fried fish and pork chop were tasty and weren’t drenched in oil despite being fried. The bok choy was nice too, though it’s really difficult to mess this dish up, but it had the perfect amount of garlic. We inhaled almost everything on the table.
Our waitress was attentive even after the restaurant started filling up for the lunch rush when our meal was almost completed. I would definitely return for lunch or a group dinner.

Food was slow to come out on a weekday where they’re not even busy for lunch. 2 of the 6 dishes we ordered came out colder than room temperature. Taste was so so, overall wasn’t that great. Unlikely to come back any time soon as there’s so many better places to goto.

We went to Jade Garden not too long after it opened. It advertises dim sum. We arrived around 10:30 am, and we were the only ones in there plus another larger party. After we got our hot tea, we were told that they don’t serve dim sum. What the …? It says dim sum in the name of the restaurant! Apparently, we weren’t the only ones fooled, as the big party decided to leave. We left too. Very disappointed that they did not immediately volunteer the fact they didn’t have dim sum when we arrived at 10:30 am. Who eats Chinese food that early unless it’s dim sum? Not recommended. Felt like a bait and switch.

Understaffed and a bit overpriced compared to the other options in DunHuang Plaza. Unlike the Sugar Land location, they do not have dimsum available despite advertising it in bold on the front windows. They also don’t have the half a Peking duck option, which was disappointing. Food was fine, but nothing differentiates it from all the others. Not something I would crave to eat again so most likely will not return.

I have to admit, we went into Jade Garden on a whim because we wanted to try something new. The waiter sat us down and we got our waters right away and some tea to warm us up on a cold rainy day. We wanted to try the $ 18.99 lobster special since it seemed to be their signature dish. Then we would add one vegetable dish to it. To our surprise, we had to order two dishes in addition to the lobster to get the special discount (Rice and Noodles don’t count). This seriously made me a bit pissed since this wasn’t stated anywhere on their menu.
We bit the bullet and ordered two dishes anyway: one green bean and the other the fried ribs that the waitress recommended as another signature dish. Now, I had fantastic ribs at Shanghai and for the $ 16.99 a plate I was thinking this was a bit pricey.
Anyway, after a short wait our food was served. The green beans came out first with pieces of minced pork on top. There was a lot of food and it was just the right amount of spice! They also bring you the large red bowl of rice so the other reviews are inaccurate that you need to ask for rice.
Next came out the lobster which was delicious. Both lobsters were big and fried the salt and pepper way. You could tell the meat was fresh even though it was a lot of work to dig into the shells to get the meat. They should really provide you crab crackers to help with the crackin’.
Lastly, came the ribs and man were they huge! Most were nearly as long as my hand and fried to perfection. Now I didn’t’ feel so bad about paying a little more for them.
Service was good. The waiter and waitress came by and filled our waters regularly. They do need to invest in non-​disposable chopsticks since the ones I was using splintered at the end half way through. This will give them a more upscale feel.
Overall, good food a bit on the pricey side. This is a good place to bring your family for special occasions or out of town guests who want a fancier place to dine and want to skip the 1 hour wait time at Confucius.

Jade Garden. I have so few words for you. In a nutshell, on a non-​busy Wednesday at 7pm:
+ Food was good
— Service. So rude and abysmal. Took food 30 minutes to arrive after ordering. Ignored me wanting to pay. Came back in a heartbeat for any kind of tip.
Will not go back, despite the decent food.

As far as Chinese restaurants go, this one gets lost in the mix and isn’t very outstanding.
There wasn’t anything that was horrible about it, but there wasn’t anything outstanding about it either. It’s located in the same plaza as East Wall and Tofu Village, and if I’m not mistaken, the owner has changed a few times already.
I went there for lunch on a Friday afternoon, and it was pretty empty. We went around 11:30AM to avoid the lunch rush, but I’m not really sure if they had a lunch rush to avoid.
They do have a special lunch menu with smaller portions but at a decent price (~$ 5 – 6). As part of their lunch special, they had an entrée that came with rice and an eggroll for around $ 7, but because I was with someone, we did family style and just got the lunch special entrée by itself.
We got to try the Braised fish, which I definitely recommend if you end up going there because it comes out to be a whole fish and has a lot of really great flavors. I’m not always a big fan of fish, but this place cleans it well and does a good job of flavoring it.
They also have the lobster special; 2 lobsters for $ 18.99, which is a really good deal! They were really fast with the lobsters and it tasted fresh.
We ordered the beef with vegetables in order to try and get some veggies for lunch, but this was probably the most disappointing because the veggies turned out to just be onions and a few green onions, nothing else. I probably wouldn’t get it again, just because it was really disappointing and pretty mediocre.
The one thing that really annoyed me, was that they didn’t give you rice until you asked for it. I mean, c’mon, what Chinese restaurant doesn’t give you rice to go with your food? Especially when you’re just ordering entrees! On top of that, they only gave us each a bowl of rice as opposed to a whole rice container.
Needless to say, I think they’re trying to cut on costs and skimp on the rice, and that’s a big no-​no for me.

Staying true to my commitment to try a different place every time I venture out to Chinatown off of Bellaire we decided to step into this place for the advertised lobster deal.
Now be forewarned although they do honor this price there is a catch which they don’t really tell you in their promotion of this special. You have to order 2 additional dishes from their menu excluding any noodle or rice dishes. We found this to be a slight annoyance which is the reason for me dinging them a star.
They were very busy when we stepped in but overall I would say the food was very good and the service was attentive. The dining area is very nice and spacious and you do hear a lot of Mandarin and Cantonese while dining but hey… it’s in Chinatown!
Friday night Don Huang Plaza was packed! We had to drive around for at least 20 minutes to find a parking spot but it was worth it for a nice dining experience!

If you are wanting to try out this place, I think you should read this first.
This was by far my worst restaurant experience. Ever.
We saw the sign for their lobster specials and decided to try it out. Our waiter was a young lady, and she didn’t understand English very well, but nodded and wrote our orders down. She later sent a guy to check to see if orders were correct and they were… It was a place in china town, we didn’t expect much from customer service.
We ordered the sizzling seafood plate and 1 lobster. The guy said 2 lobsters would be a better deal instead of 1 we denied at first since we weren’t very hungry, but he was very persistent so we ended up ordering 2 lobsters. Our sizzling plate came out, and it was ok. The seafood consisted of too much imitation crab meat in my opinion. We were almost done with our plate and our lobsters still haven’t came out, and a table who ordered AFTER us received theirs already. I was getting irritated.
We asked, and they said it was because the lobster is fresh, they have to take it out of the tank and kill it. Ok… So finally our plate came out. Suddenly… a different waitress came by and said (yelled, really) we HAVE TO order another plate. We were confused… we are the customers, so we can order whatever we want right? And she didn’t speak a lot of English, so she had to get the guy to explain to us. The lobster deal is that we have to order 2 plates in order to get the lobster special. Excuse me, but NO ONE told us that in the beginning, and it’s not written on the sign displayed on your windows or written in your menu. She looked mad and kept yelling that we have to order 2 plates, so I asked for the manager. She proceeded to go to the back, we hear some loud conversation going on, and the guy came back this time and told us the 2 plate policy again. Now I was furious. I told him, you can take the plate back then, we don’t want it. We originally wanted ONE lobster and you practically made us order 2, and now you’re blaming your mistake of not telling us the 2 plate policy, and want to make us pay the original price? HELL NO.
The matter was settled after he went to go talk to the manager… or someone. Honestly the lobster was bland and not flavorful at all, and it seemed like it wasn’t fresh either. This matter could’ve been settled differently, the manager should’ve came to talk to us, since we asked for him/​her specifically. Instead we got to talk to their incompetent employees who don’t even know what they’re doing. You’re the manager, you’re suppose to MANAGE the place. And to the rude waitress, If you’re going to start an argument with somebody, anybody, you better have evidence to back you up. And you’re in the hospitality industry, you shouldn’t even be yelling at your customers.
By the looks of it, if this kind of customer service keeps up, this place will be closing down very soon. NEVER coming back.

Stopped by with the family thinking they had dim sum, a reasonable assumption given they’re advertising that fact everywhere. Including the restaurant name. While we quickly found out they don’t offer dim sum, we decided to stick it out and give it a shot given that we were already situated.
The short of it is this:
— restaurant layout looks nice and relatively clean, especially for Chinatown standards
— food is pricey which in it of itself is fine but unfortunately a bit bland with relatively small portions
Not worth the trouble…

So exicted to see another Cantonese restaurant at this strip mall. I have tried their Sugarland location many years ago and finally they open one in Chinatown.
We ordered the $ 18.99 double lobsters, honey glazed beef ribs and custom ordered a vegetable with soft tofu for my kid. We added noodles to the lobster dish for extra. Lobsters were live and good size, cooked just right with perfect sauce to soak the noodles. The beef was deep fried tossed with a sweet sauce. The tofu was just like how we asked for it.
Our family cleaned out EVERYTHING! It was that good. They also have very fancy live seafood in tanks such as shrimp, king crab, tilapia and ocean fishes. Now that I know their chef is good, we can try the high dollar seafood.
Reviews that said their food is plain/​bland, my guess is their taste buds had been numbed by all the spicy oil soak dishes from all those northern Chinese restaurant in that mall. This is delicate Cantonese cuisine where freshness is key, not an overwhelming sauce.
Atmosphere and service are both nice but nothing special. My only complain is that I was a bit thirsty after dinner, which is an indication that MSG was used.

This restaurant took over the spot previously occupied by Golden Panda and prior to that Hot Hot Hot.
First the good. The owner obviously spent a good amount of money renovating and redecorating the place. The wait staff were all very friendly, although they spoke limited English, which wasn’t a problem for me since I speak fluent Mandarin but it may be if you don’t. Unfortunately this is where the good ends.
Now the bad. Their food was extremely bland. The dishes we ordered got us full but definitely left us wanting to eat more just to get some flavor. We went in the early afternoon and we were the only table there when we ordered but the food still took at least 15 minutes before they started coming out. Later another group came in and sat near us. From what we overheard, I doubt they will be coming back anytime soon too. Another strange thing is their sign clearly says they offer Dim Sum yet when we asked the waitress, she simply smiled and said «Sorry, we don’t have dim sum.» Not «Sorry, we don’t have dim sum YET.» just that they don’t have it.
It’s truly sad when a new business spent so much money getting started but their food is barely edible. Being in the very competitive Dun Huang Plaza, they would either close within a month or two or they would have to change their chef or the way they make their dishes. I sincerely hope it’s the former.