Jade Garden — Restaurant in Tampa

We are embarking on a one year test of local Chinese restaurants, comparing them to one we regularly frequent. Jade Garden was up first. We ordered the bean curd with mixed vegetables, the honey chicken (would have preferred General Tso's chicken but it wasn't listed in the poultry section, just in the specials section, so missed it), steamed dumplings, and shrimp rolls. There were three of us.

The bean curd was okay. Not as good as the dish we regularly get. The vegetables were a bit crisper and not cooked as well. The sauce was more bland and lacked subtlety. It also had a darker, thicker, and more sour flavor than we are used to.

The honey chicken was really just breaded chicken coated with honey. No flavor beyond that. It's a little hard to critique it because that is what the recipe is, but there wasn't much to savor. I immediately started considering sauces to add or dip them into.

The dumplings were also pretty bland. They lacked any nuance or spice, and the dipping sauce was a slightly modified soy sauce. Nothing special there.

The shrimp rolls were also bland, though that did mean the shrimp flavor stood out.

Overall, the food was a bit greasier than we would have preferred and lacked flavor.

The portion sizes were bigger than our usual place by about a 1/3 but we also paid about 40% more.

This is passable Chinese food. Serving sizes are large, but the food...

Sad! Last evening after spending too long at Publix a friend and I decided to just get takeout instead of cooking and Jade Garden was right there. Neither of us had order from there before and figured we would give them a try; oops. I ordered a Mongolian Beef, Large Fried Rice and two egg rolls. Bland can’t quite describe how unseasoned the bright yellow fried rice was, no flavor whatsoever even after applying all 3 soy sauce packets. After a few bites I was over it as it was not worth eating. The eggrolls were just as bad, no flavor whatsoever even with duck and soy sauce. They were terrible. The biggest disappointment came with the Mongolian Beef. It was just bad. A little beef with lots of onions and peppers drowning in an absolutely flavorless brown gravy; it sucked. My friend was equally disappointed with their food barely eating what they ordered.

One and done. The food was just not good. Will not be back or...

3 stars for the food 🍲 customer service isn’t so friendly like seen in other post must be do to shift change 🤣🤣 the Lo mein is not that great..but you do get a very large portion to feed 4-5 people easily..and the sesame chicken is really good

. . . . . Edit for response to owner. For one I didn’t come pickup an hour late the cashier over the phone said pickup 15-20 minutes so I drove there soon as I hung up the phone 2. The Lo mein was piping hot so no complaint about that,it just doesn’t taste good. 3 the cashier was rude to another customer before me and I still purchased the food.. I think 🤔 you might want to update y’all’s customers service skills cause believe me the food isn’t worth the attitude plus made the lady in front of me that paid with a debit card which so did I. Sign the receipt as if it was a credi card which was very weird never had a restaurant do that. So those 3 stars...