Jade Rabbit — Restaurant in Portland

I want to preface this review by saying my husband and I have been here several times, together and separately, and almost always have a good experince. The food is a little slow for typical restaurant standards, but worth the wait. We dont hesitate to send folks here regularly, and havent heard bad feedback, thus why this isnt a one-star review.

The experience this past Tues was awful. Despite making reservations outside, something was messed up with reservations and we had to wait a short while to be seated. While at the bar, it took too long for anyone to take even a drink order while we waited. We did add a 5th person to our party, which may have contributed to the time, but there are only a few tables outside, just slap a chair on the end. We asked for a fifth chair once seated, which never arrived, and we borrowed one from another table ourselves.

The food took way longer than it ever has to arrive, and then we never saw our server again. We were missing a dish, and one dish was the wrong one. I brought our empty glasses to the bar myself to be bussed because the table had no space. Empty plates sat on our table for ages, until I finally had to go tell the bartender that our server vanished and we wanted our check so we could leave. Bartender brought it herself. It had gratuity added, required for parties of 6+, but we were 5. We asked them to remove the incorrect item and gratuity, which she did, plus discounted our bill by $5.

While paying, a member of our group went to the bar to order two desserts for takeout. They took 45 MINUTES to arrive. We kept asking and asking for them to check on our order and it still took that long. And our server finally showed up to clear dishes, acting as if nothing happened. We were here 2.5-3 hours total, which is insane.

I dont know if we offended anyone, or if we were sat too far away from other tables for folks to bother with us, or what. I know places have bad days, but we felt disrespected, not just neglected. The bartender (and food) were the only saving graces of this visit, and she was trying to keep the peace while also busting tail on her own stuff. She needs a raise and the rest of the staff needs retraining.

In summary, I will eat here again because the food is phenomenal, but if another experience even comes close to this one, it’s not worth it. I will happily update this if it...

EXTREMELY disappointing. Would absolutely not recommend or return.

We had a reservation (so I know exactly what time we arrived) and were starving, which made us really excited to try this place. Unfortunately, it was a letdown across the board.

Atmosphere The space is small and cozy but lacks a clear identity. You can spot several different Asian influences, but there isn’t a strong point of view tying it together. There’s a back dining room separated from the front by the bar. The space is clean and does give a bit of an “at home” feeling, which I liked.

Service The customer service was honestly the only redeeming part. I didn’t catch her name, but the tall server with the cool hairstyle was working the entire front of house when we arrived. She was greeting guests, running the bar, and managing tables for the back and front dining rooms. She was friendly, calm the entire time, and professional, but clearly stretched thin. To no fault of hers, we ended up waiting 25 minutes just to place our order (again, with a reservation). At that time, there was only one other table of two in the front and no one at the bar. Eventually, she got some backup, but the wait really set the tone.

Food This was the most disappointing part. With the steep prices and amazing food photos online, we expected a great meal. They were out of the adobo (the dish I was most excited for), so I ordered the mapo tofu. The food came out surprisingly fast considering how long it took us to place the order (about 15 minutes), and everything looked beautiful. Unfortunately, the taste didn’t match the presentation.

We ordered ($75 which includes 22% service fee):

Turnip cakes: the only decent dish, mostly thanks to the sauce, since the cakes themselves were bland.

Kimchi mung bean pancakes: bland, and the sauce was so salty it was inedible, leaving us with plain pancakes.

Mapo tofu: tasted like it was just dusted with five spice and nothing else. Bland and very flat.

Lo mei gai: again, bland and disappointing.

Pandan carrot cake: good flavor but served cold and very hard (I even took a video to demonstrated how hard it was but Google won't allow me to upload it 🙄).

Overall Between the high prices, under-seasoned food, slow service (despite the server doing her best), and a mandatory 22% service fee, this was a bad experience....

Super cute spot! Gorgeous bar with a small space for 10 tables on the 2nd floor. I would definitely recommend a reservation. The food was mostly really good. Firstly, the steamed chili oil wontons were both my and my sisters favorite dish! The meat was really flavorful and she (not vegan) said she would've never guessed it was vegan. I personally also really loved the bunny buns and the hint of sweetness they had to help cut all the other salty/spicy food, but my sister and the gentleman dining next to us both thought they were underwhelming. The shumai and tofu skin rolls were both super yummy! I loved the slight crunch the noodles gave in the tofu skin rolls. The sauce that comes with the shumai was our favorite sauce so we ended up using it on most of the dishes. The turnip cakes were way too starchy/crumbly compared to traditional turnip cakes, and extremely bland. Traditional turnip cakes usually have little bits of veggie and meat in them but I didn't see any bits of anything in these.

We got one cocktail each, and the Everything Everywhere All at Once was gorgeous but did need to be remade. The first one that came out was super watery and just kind of tasted like a little bit of unsweetened lemonade that had sat over ice for way too long, but on the remake the bartender said he added a lot more yuzu and it turned out much better!

Our biggest qualm of the night is definitely the truffles. For $12 you get five housemade liquor infused truffles. This sounded like a really fun idea but unfortunately it was absolutely terrible. The chocolate is supposed to be filled with ganache, which is meant to be soft and almost buttery. These chocolates were chalky and super dry as if they sat in the fridge for months. 0/10 do not recommend. The Ube Brownie was delicious though! I wish they baked it in a ramekin instead so it was a bit more presentable and easier to eat (the cupcake wrapper method doesn't work very well for this since it's really sticky) and some house-made vegan ice cream of some sort would be outstanding with it!

All in all, I'd love to come back with my other vegan sister to give it another shot. I did see some reviews that say quality has gone down more recently so maybe there's just something going on back of house or on management side that has caused these food...