Jade Garden: Abloom with culinary delights

MANILA, Philippines - Back in the ’80s when Makati was not yet the commercial behemoth it is today, I remember dining at Jade Garden, a gem of a resto tucked away beside Automat and Makati Supermarket. It closed down in 1990 due to some Ayala renovation and reopened in 1991 in the old Greenbelt 1. Again, because of some developments in the area, it closed again in 2006. And the good news is, the Jade Garden is back!

And I’m back here at the Jade Garden, welcoming back an old friend who went into hibernation for eight long years and smelling the roses — I mean, the roast laid down on our table.  The roasted suckling pig comes with wrappers (pancakes) so you can eat it like you would your favorite Peking duck dish.  But its skin is temptingly crispy you want to just bite into it sans the wrapper. This dish may have taken 12 hours to cook, but it took only 12 minutes for us to devour it.

Today’s Jade Garden, which reopened last January 17 at the new Glorietta 2, is abloom with old and new culinary delights.  After the good old suckling pig, we swoop down on our little bowls of soup full of prawns and dried scallop with bean curd.

For the first time, I’m trying the Mini Fortune Poon Choi. I have the good fortune to discover this big bowl feast, which consists of various meats, assorted seafood, various mushrooms, tofu, and radish served in nine to 12 layers good enough to satisfy 10 hungry people.

“Poon Choi is a communal dish from the New Territory that’s usually served for weddings,” says restaurant manager Archie Au.

PR guy Mario Tan adds, “It’s usually a mix of seafood and meats served layer by layer in a big bowl and put on the floor for everybody to enjoy.”

I dig into my bowl of Poon Choi and unearth the following culinary finds: honey glazed barbecued pork, soy sauce marinated chicken, black mushroom, vegetables, fresh suaje, and sea cucumber. That mini feast is filling enough, but when you’re at Jade Garden, fill up or ship out!

I love scallops and I love taro so this next dish is a double treat for me — deep-fried scallops stuffed with mashed taro and deep-fried milk balls. I go ball-istic over the milk balls, too, oozing with sweet milky goodness.

Bean there, done that? You may have tried lapu-lapu in most other Chinese restos, but have you tried it with tender, slender French beans? Oui, east means west, it’s a match made in culinary heaven.

To continue our “steamy” love affair with Cantonese cuisine (the most famous Chinese cuisine worldwide) at Jade Garden, we’re served steamed diced chicken in egg white wraps “Chiu Chow.” So flavorful, so light, so right!

Does that wrap up our fine feast at Jade Garden? No way! We still have the Foo Kien seafood rice with abalone sauce in casserole and the sautéed zucchini with fresh crabmeat and sotanghon to demolish.

To repeat an old perennial question: Why is the rice always served last in Chinese feasts?

“That’s to make sure you’re full, in case the foregoing dishes were not enough to fill your stomach,” explains Mario.

The Chinese surely are the hosts with the mostest!

To cap this feast on a sweet note, we have hot sweetened almond puree with dumpling.

For a little foodnote: An affiliate of the giant food conglomerate Maxim’s Caterers Limited, Jade Garden traces its roots to early ’70s Hong Kong with its trailblazing East-meets-West approach to cooking. Steeped in rich culinary history, Jade Garden speaks of the pure essence of Cantonese culture in all its nuances and subtleties.

“Cantonese cooking is characterized primarily by its freshness,” says restaurant manager Raymond Ho. “Traditionally, dishes that we serve have a light taste and are not oily. We also make sure our ingredients are of premium quality. If you don’t have good ingredients to start with, you can’t make a good dish.”

To cater to its legion of Filipino customers, executive chef Ho Chi Kwong explains, “Filipinos like their food with more sauce and salt, so I tweaked the recipes a bit to better suit the local palate.”

You’re guaranteed to get the full authentic experience when you dine at Jade Garden. “Filipinos love their dipping sauces (think patis and toyo), so much so that they forego tasting the dishes we serve in their original form,” Raymond notes. “So we encourage them to eat the food the way it’s eaten in Cantonese culture, which is taking it as it is, without any additional flavorings. This opens up a different experience and they get to enjoy the food in more ways that they’re used to.”

New delicious surprises await Jade Garden’s Pinoy clients. “About 60 percent of our current offerings haven’t been introduced yet,” says executive chef Ho Chi Kwong. “Like the prawns and dried scallop with bean curd soup, braised chicken with basil leaves in hot casserole, and pan-fried sliced beef in lingnan sauce.”

To come up with all these new dishes, which are bound to become bestsellers, Ho Chi Kwong had to go back to where it all started. “I made sure to visit Hong Kong’s best restaurants to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and techniques,” he asserts.

Jade Garden is bound to be a vegetarian haven, too, with its healthy veggies menu: To name some dishes, Sichuan bean curd, sizzling eggplant with tausi sauce, stewed bean curd with abalone mushroom, fried crispy noodles with lo hon vegetables, fried rice with pineapple and lettuce, stewed e-fu noodles with lo hon veggies.

For budgetarians, Jade Garden has  reasonably priced set menus — from P7,000 plus to P24,000 plus for 12 persons. The simplest one (at P7,080/12 persons) would have, for instance, a roasted meat combination, sweet corn and bamboo pith with vegetables soup, fish fillet cutlet with salad sauce, sweet and sour pork, roasted garlic flavor chicken, sautéed sliced beef and zucchini with XO sauce, fried rice Yeung Chow style, and purple rice with sago in coconut milk for dessert. On the other hand, the most elaborate set (at P24,880/12 persons) would have roasted suckling pig, shark’s fin soup with fresh crab roe, roasted Peking duck, fresh scallops and sea whelk with XO sauce, braised sliced abalone with sea cucumber, stir-fried lapu-lapu fillet with vegetable, baked king prawns with cheese and udon, fried rice with conpoy and egg white, and seasonal fruit platter.

Go ahead and walk through the menu of Jade Garden, smell and enjoy fine Chinese cuisine. And find out why after all these years Jade Garden still rocks!

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Jade Garden is located at the 2nd level of Glorietta 2, Palm Drive corner West Drive, Ayala Center, Makati. For details and reservations, call 843-1361 and 955-1808.