Jade Palace — Restaurant in Town of Wappinger

It was terrible 20-years ago, ...and it's still terrible today. 20-years ago, I contracted food poisoning from the Jade Palace and never went back. Recently, co-workers told me that it changed ownership and was much better now, so I tried it, again, on a Thursday night.

When I walked in the restaurant, the first thing I noticed was the absence of heat, probably around 55 to 60F. They claimed that the heat was broken. There were no customers in the restaurant or anyone else waiting for take out at 7pm, which I thought was odd.

I ordered the following for take out. BBQ Beef Sticks, Shrimp Toast, House Lo Mein, and Fried Duck.

When I unpacked the bag of Chinese food, it was truly a shocking sight. The beef sticks were almost incinerated (see photos). I'm not sure what possessed me to try it, but I did just that. ...It tasted like an ashtray; like carbon soot ash! Blackened, wet, ashy soot! I spit it out and put the beef sticks back in the bag.

In a vain hope that the rest of the meal would be okay, I tried the shrimp toast. Once again, they were overcooked to the point that they were hollowed out, crouton-like, greasy crust (see photo). Imagine biting a crouton loaded with salad oil - that's the shrimp toast! Not sure what happened to the shrimp pate that's supposed to be inside. It's probably at the bottom of their Fry-o-lator, along with everyone else's dinners.

Moving on to the main course, the "Fried Duck." (Please see picture!) This poor duck never had a chance in life or death! It was cleaver chopped and deep fried, until every drop of juice was completely gone. Notice the close-up photo has no sign of moisture, sauce, vegetables or anything to offer flavor. What even make this Chinese food? It was seasoned with nothing, served with nothing, and over-fried, until it was chewy as rawhide leather.

I didn't bother opening the container of lo mein, after all that, so I packed up my meal, refrigerated it, and returned to the restaurant for a refund the following night. The refund was issued, but not without a polite argument with the owner. Then, to avoid a scene in front of the few customers that were now seated, he quickly refunded my money, when he noticed his customers watching the refund conflict!

It's the worst Chinese food that I have ever experienced and wouldn't recommend it to my enemy. There's plenty of great Chinese restaurants throughout Dutchess County. This is NOT...

Past their prime. The old Jade Palace is no more, this food is awful. Here is a recent delivery order:

Sesame Beef: "chunks of fried beef" are the size of fried clam strips. Hard threads of fried batter with twists of "something" in them. It could be TVP or saitan for all i could tell. Same with the Orange Beef. They don't have slices or chunks of beef anywhere, it's all shreds of mystery meat packed in hard, chewy batter.

Sesame Wonton: the wonton were not cooked. Literally raw dough. I could see the flour prints on the dough, these had never seen a pan of water. Disgraceful.

Wonton Soup: Cold. The other dishes were piping hot but not the soup, so it wasn't the delivery time. It started out cold. Uncooked wonton were put in the broth, but since it was cold they didn't even heat during travel. The broth is a generic yellowish canned broth, they didn't even make it. There were also no scallions or pork threads in the soup! Just uncooked wonton in canned broth. The worst Ive ever had.

Shrimp in Lobster Sauce: I ordered a large for $18 and it had FOUR shrimp in it. So yes, $18 for a quart of egg whites and peas. This one was tasty but there's no excuse for skimping like that.

Pork Egg Foo Young: Instead of brown gravy this came with brown sauce, like a dark version of the one on sweet and sour pork. Tasteless. Also the patties were burned. Not just crispy, actually black char edges. I've eaten this here for over 10 years and I've never seen such a horrible version from them. Even storefronts with no seating can manage this dish.

Jade Palace used to be one of the best Chinese restaurants in the county. No more. It also used to be worth the price. I've eaten all of these dishes there for many years and I'm sad to say I will never eat there again. We've had family celebrations and get-togethers over awesome food and now it's a basic greasy...

Overall: disappointing on multiple fronts, I would not try this again. There are better options around. I’d give it 2.5 stars, but it’s certainly more of a 2 than a 3 if I have to choose.

Delivery was on-time, but the food itself was lacking. I would not call this “authentic”, which is what other reviews say - I’ve had much better, and in my opinion more authentic, food elsewhere. Chicken lo mein was basically flavorless, tasted slightly sweet of anything. Chicken with cashews didn’t have much flavor and I’m not convinced about the “chicken” - some of it was full of fat and tendons, and other chunks I honestly think were tofu not chicken based on texture and shape of cut (perfect rectangle). Pineapple chicken was the best dish we had, sauce had some flavor and even slightly spicy and the chicken pieces were much better. That was the redeeming part of the meal. Egg roll had decent crunch but inside filling wasn’t very good and honestly I couldn’t even tell what it was.

Useful info on portion sizing: their menu states “small/lunch” and “large” as sizes for dishes, rather than the much more common pint/quart sizing at Chinese restaurants. As best I can tell, their “small” is roughly a pint and “large” is roughly a quart. Hopefully that helps others know rough...