Jade Garden

2 Reviews on “Jade Garden”

• KennyDee

  Not this time. Sorry but our experience was not so good. We ordered takeout and were very disappointed. (by the way, no credit cards at the point of sale, you have to order from the Beyond Menu web system for credit cards).We ordered the seafood soup for two and it was actually not bad, but not exceptional either. Fortunately were taking the food home where we have plenty of stuff to doctor up food. We both added Sambal (chili garlic) sauce to our seafood soup to give it the flavor it lacked.My wife ordered a jumbo shrimp entre (cant remember which one, they pretty much all look alike) and while it looked good, it was not. It was completely lacking in flavor. She had to step all over it with Sambal to make it enjoyable.Heres the real test: I ordered Ma Po Tofu which is a staple in any Chinese restaurant (basic poor mans food. Google it and read the story behind it) and as clear cut as it can be as to what it is AND is one of the few items on most menus that is actually authentic Chinese. What I got was NOT Ma Po Tofu (by the way Im not a vegetarian, but I love this dish usually and order it all over town), it was virtually unprepared chunks of tofu swimming in what I suppose is their brown sauce they use all over the menu.Ma Po Tofu is to be made with chili bean paste from fermented black beans and has green onion not what looked like from frozen diced carrots and peas…AND it is supposed to be heavy on Szechuan pepper (a very specific spice from the prickly ash berry that has a numbing effect) AND also be very spicy. What I got was absolutely nothing like Ma Po Tofu except that it had tofu and the sauce was brown.Either they have no idea what Ma Po Tofu is, which tells you they dont know what they are doing, or they think their customers are fools that not only dont know what certain dishes are supposed to be, but also have no idea what good food tastes like. I had to totally deconstruct this dish and re-create it in to something edible, otherwise throw it out which I hate to do.The only good thing I can say about our order is the portions were huge (dinner order). I guess they figure they know the Americans the serve like big portions, but they clearly also know their regular customers apparently dont know what good food is if our order was anything close to representative of their menu.Also, like I wrote above, the seafood soup was OK. It was easily salvaged by some chili garlic sauce but you should not need to do that. The ingredients were large, chunky and the vegetables in the soup were fresh and the portion was large.I give a GENEROUS 2 stars for an edible soup and large portions, but 2 stars is a stretch for our order.Sorry fans, I suppose your food has been better or you have never had good Chinese (Well…what most Americans call Chinese food because most of it is not and has never been served in China). Properly made Ma Po Tofu http://www.seriouseats.com/2011/07/how-the-best-mapo-dofu-is-made-fuloon-restaurant-malden-ma.html

  March 5, 2014, 3:21 pm

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• Marie

  Fresh and delicious. Jade Garden has very fresh vegetables and ingredients. They are easily the best Chinese food in Charlottesville.

  January 24, 2012, 10:27 pm

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