The Jade Seafood Restaurant: New Digs but Hit-and-Miss Dim Sum

Not too long ago, The Jade Seafood Restaurant re-opened in their new digs on No. 3 Road so we decided to pay them a visit when we had a hankering for some dim sum during the Thanksgiving long weekend.

While it’s been a good 6 years since we last visited Jade Seafood, the thing that stood out from my memory was it being super busy with cramped dining quarters. Sure enough, it was quite busy on our visit at 10am (they open at 9am). The restaurant is located on the 2nd floor and they really don’t have a large waiting area so the lineup often snakes down the staircase.

In terms of service, we had to wait about 35 minutes to be seated (best to make reservations ahead of time) and then we had to flag a person for a menu after the first person we asked forgot to come back with one. I suppose part of that is due to how busy they get here. After ordering, we waited another 20+ minutes for the food to arrive. It seemed like they were making all of the dim sum items for one table before they moved on to the next table.

The first dish to arrive (no surprise) was the dessert of Longan and Lychee Pudding ($4.99). I was hoping for this to be better but it was just meh. I wasn’t a fan of all of the tiny bits and pieces “floating” about the gelatin as it got stuck in my teeth and it lacked flavour from the longan and lychee.

After our dessert arrived, the rest of our dishes started to come out – including the Chinese Donut Rice Roll ($7.99). This was a good version with a crisp Chinese donut encased in a velvety rice roll mixed with green onions.

The best dish of the day was the Steamed Phoenix Claws ($6.99) aka chicken feet. Superbly melt-in-your-mouth tender is the best description that I can come up for this dish.

In addition to the dim sum dishes, we also ordered the Shredded Chicken Salad ($11.99) which we thought was a bit off in the flavour. This dish isn’t included in the 20% discount and probably wasn’t worth what we paid for.

Another dish that was a disappointment was the Xiao Long Bao ($5.99). As is typical with restaurants that don’t specialize in Shanghainese food, these dumplings were unremarkable. At least one dumpling was broken and the others were so lacking in soup that they I wouldn’t even consider calling them “soupy dumplings”.

Finally, our last dish of Steamed Beef Balls ($6.99), while small in size, were actually very good. I loved the light and bouncy texture of the beef balls.

Nice new digs but it’s overly busy here and dishes are very hit-and-miss.

208 – 2811 No 3 Rd
Richmond, BC

www.jaderestaurant.ca