Jade Garden's opened by a brother and sister team, Chris and Jenny Eng. Jenny has 20 over years of experience in managing restaurant operations and Chris Eng also with 21 years of kitchen experience is the Executive Chef. Together they have come together to come out with a nice team serving good food with good service.
It's not the usual dull Chinese restaurant, Jade Garden joins the club of classy elegant Chiense restaurants. Looks like a place to have business lunches or a cosy family meal. As the restaurant is in the main clubhouse building with a ball room next door, the ceilings here are high and feels airy and welcoming.
They have a no pork and no lard policy here.
Momo and I were here together with Camemberu, hosted by FoodNews, the PR company for Jade Garden. Here's what we ate and what we thought about it:
Deep-Fried Yam Stuffed with Minced Chicken ($3.80 for 3 pieces)
We are used to have the this dish with minced pork, but the minced chicken version was quite good too! I did not know it was not pork until later when I was told.
Fluffy, crispy and light on the outside, and the yam-my sticky and moist texture of the yam with minced chicken filling inside. Can you imagine the crispy sound as you bite into it?
Siew Mai ($4.20 for 4 pieces)
These Siew Mai were also made without pork! The Siew Mais seems to have more prawn bits with some chicken meat. It had the chewy/QQ feel to it, when I like.
Chef Special Combination Platter ($12/pax)
If you like stylist and modern plating of Chinese food, Chef Chris does it beautifully.
This combination platter served was so beautiful.
One look and we thought that the strip on the plate was balsamic vinegar, but no. It's something more oriental. It's Teriyaki sauce!
The Chilled Crab Salad was the centre of attraction.
It's a refreshing dish to start your meal here. Inside the tomato cavity was chilled crab with some very light dressing. If you like tomatoes, eat it up like I did. If not, I guess you could leave it.
Drunken Chicken.
Momo thinks it's not strong enough for her. She likes her drunken chicken drunken stupor. (I think I married an alcoholic!)
You know 'white chicken' in Singapore has many styles, some have HK hint, some Malaysia hint and some Singapore hint to it. This one taste more Malaysian. (Very hard to describe lah, I think you all know what I mean).
The ginger and scallion sauce and a single wolfberry was used as a garnish. There was jelly fish below too.
Wasabi prawns.
Nicely fried crispy prawns coated with wasabi mayo with a few black sesame seeds.
The mango cubes below gives it a nice slight sweetish and sour taste. Nice combi.
The next dish, a soup was served in this huge big UFO like platter. It was the Braised Shark's Fin with Crabmeat & Dried Scallop in Pumpkin Soup ($18/pax; $45 [small], $68 [medium], $90 [large]) The centre is rather deep, so you get quite a bit of it.
If you do take Sharks Fin, this dish will be interesting to you. Instead of gooey starch that's the usual method of preparation, Chef Chris serves it in a light pumpkin soup! It has the gooey feel, but not as starchy. This east meets west rendition comes out rather well.
I like the pumpkin soup! I wonder for anti-shark people, they can prepare it without the shark for you to try! It's lovely!
Braised Sliced Abalone, Dried Scallop and Vegetables in Tan Jia Sauce ($18/pax)
This dish was interesting too. Abalone that's braised just nice and topped with Tan Jia Sauce. What sauce, I imagine you asking in your head?
Tan Jia is supposedly invented in the time of the ancient emperors. It uses the essence of duck, old hens and dried scallops as its base. Interesting eh?
Cod Fish Baked with Miso and Sauteed Edamame ($14/pax)
We really liked the cod fish baked with miso as it was really soft and tasty. It crumbles into soft sections as you cut through it with your knife. It's cod fish well prepared!
When the food was served, I thought the red thing was minced tuna.
No, it's watermelon that had a hollow cavity, filled with mayo.
Fresh Crab Claw with Japanese Somen ($12/pax)
If you want to wow your guests, order this dish for everyone. It was really tasty and Momo still thinks about this dish and says we should go back and try this again.
It's steamed egg white with ginger, a nice succulent crab claw with silky smooth somen (thin noodles made from wheat flour). The base of the plate is steamed egg that's a similar to chawanmushi but softer. The noodles are nice and the broth that covers it was so addictive.
It no one's around, I would have picked the bowl and poured all the broth into my spoon and not waste a bit of it!
Combination Dessert Platter ($12)
Before we were served this, we saw a table ordering it. We then saw other tables asking the serving staff what the name of the dish? Before you know it, we saw the few tables around us all having it!
You can share if you want, but we know everyone has a hidden stomach somewhere that can fill in desserts. Order one each if your budget allows.
In the 3 shotglass: Mango Pudding, Cold Lemongrass Jelly with Sherbet and Pumpkin Sago with Vanilla Ice Cream. Mixture of sweets with sourish hints.
We tasted the ala carte items above. If you want something planned out for you, set lunches are available from $38++/pax for 6 courses. An Executive Set Lunch for 4 pax is available at $88++ for 6 courses.
Jade Garden
48 Boon Lay Way
The Chevrons
#03-06
Singapore 609961
Tel: + 65 6862 4931
No comments:
Post a Comment