Jade Isle Restaurant

I really felt bad for this place. This place is older than me. This might have been the most popular place in 70’s and 80’s but in today’s day n age, its lost all its shine.
Empty parking lots with lots of potholes, very old décor and at places smelly, some kind of a storage area having soda bottles as soon as you get in, cheap chinese CD’s and DVD’s on sale, shabby bar and reception area, one would get lost if this is really a restaurant.
If you get past all of these, there is a decent seating area for family. I did find few families sitting down with their kids and enjoying the evening.
Now, coming to the menu and food, its at best average. I am not a big fan of american chinese but thats just my preference. The dim sums were okay but cannot complain as I did not visit during the regular dimsum cart hours. My feeling, the dim sum place down the road on Rt 22 probably would be better and fresh.
I wish they invest to remodel it and upgrade the menu. Our tastes are changing and very different from 70’s and 80’s. With time, one needs to change. I wish them the very best but will not be returning till something drastically changes.

Delicious, reliable and consistent — take out or dine in. The best soups and spare ribs. Everything else is great too.

I really wanted this place to be good, but the consistently empty parking lot was a sign. The place in Greenbrook on 22 was way better for dim sum. The shu mai and ham shui gok were good. The har gow wrappers were gummy and stuck together (not cool), the cheung fun was pretty greasy and the char siu bao has a huge bao to char siu ratio. Service was very nice and friendly — that’s the anomaly for a Chinese restaurant! But it’s not enough to save the underwhelming food.

Very good Chinese food the wait is a little long but well worth it, I had the general Tso’s chicken orange chicken, egg foo young was very good, the drinks are very well priced and a lot of bang for your buck if you know what I mean nice and strong a big parking lot, never crowded and they will taper the menu to your liking

If you want authentic dim sum then this is the place.
The food is great and the chef seems to be very seasoned and tenured therefore The food makes up for all of the visual short falls.
The place has old décor but is still well kept and clean in the dinning room. Their parking lot is falling apart and at first glance it might look closed.
If this place got a refreshed look I think they could double or triple the business they are getting today from a younger demographic.

This restaurant is good if you accept it for what it is. A weekday or weekend lunch place for those living within 15 minutes, nothing out of the ordinary, no frills, with reasonable quality food but no great atmosphere.
They have been open for probably 50 years, the owners are getting tired, and it shows. You will find the décor dated and a little cluttered. Some peeling wallpaper, old fish tanks, ceiling tiles in need of repair.
But underneath that the food is surprisingly ok/​good. They manage to keep good cooks on staff. You just have to get past the aged décor.
I would not come here for a special occasion or hoping for a surprise, or a romantic evening out or with friends who you’d want to enjoy a long dinner with drinks and conversation. But they are good for lunch or dim sum on a Saturday /​Sunday — they do have a good selection, hot and good quality. Prices are reasonable. $ 3 – 4 per dim sum plate, maybe $ 7 – 9 lunch specials.
They just need some new blood to take over the restaurant or turn it into something else. The real estate is probably worth more than keeping the restaurant running, but someone has to tell them that. In the meantime, visit for lunch if you happen to be in the area, and experience good tasting food served in 30-​years-​ago style.

My husband and I live a couple of miles from Jade Isle. It is our go to place for Chinese takeout. We have never dined in. My husband orders the same thing almost every single time (either General Tso’s or Chicken with Broccoli) and is always pleased. Egg rolls are good. I typically get cashew chicken but also branch out and get different soups and other entrees (e.g., moo shu chicken). It is always very tasty and we have never had a bad meal. I highly recommend it.
The only reason I have not given it five stars is that there are intermittent (and admittedly infrequent) issues with getting the order right and there is some variability in the way the food is prepared (e.g., occasionally the stir fried rice will have large chunks of onion — which my husband hates and it seems like the chef is always changing the cashew chicken recipe). They had a spate a few years ago where they got the order wrong three or four times in a row (e.g., missing items) or it took 45 minutes to get the order and I swore I would never go back… but I eventually caved because we didn’t find anyplace better… since then, we have only had a couple of very minor glitches with the order or timing.
The food is tasty enough to roll the dice on the very infrequent glitches so I’d encourage you to try it out. Really good, solid food and very reasonably priced.

You know there’s something to a dim sum restaurant when the place is loaded with Chinese people. Not being Chinese however, we still enjoyed this place until today. Pretending they didn’t know the word «no», they would throw dishes on the table we didn’t request, get angry if we didn’t understand what they said and delivered us chillingly cold won ton soup! When we discovered steel wool in our sticky rice they graciously refunded us $ 4.25. I have to find a new place for dim sum!

Great place best Chinese food around; anyone complaining about slow service miss the whole point of the restaurant. They take their time and make the dining experience an event. All servers are extremely experienced and do an amazing job, will certainly return and highly recommend.

I’m not going to be I even pick on the décor or the parking because it is what is. I was there for dim sum on a weekend and tried 6 – 7 different dishes. Honestly I didn’t like any of them.

Excellent food, 1970s airport atmosphere, the slowest service of all time. 30 minutes in between visits from the waiter in a dining room with more staff than guests. The only reason we were able to order a second drink was because the waiter came by to ask what we had ordered for dinner, 30 minutes after we ordered it! Only eat here if you have hours upon hours of extra time to kill while wasting away in inner New Jersey.
P. S. There was a pube in my fortune cookie. Not kidding.

This place is so beat up. It starts right when you pull into the lot. The lot has weeds and cracks all over the place. Looks like it is a abandoned lot. The inside is not much better. Service and food is okay. However not worth eating okay food in a dump like atmosphere.

We came here for Dim Sum.
The place is old and out dated.
But that is if they feed you. We kept asking for the carts or food in general and we were always left in the dark. And Im asian! Little upset with the service. For the few little samples we did eat, they were very delicious.

Food is excellent and it is our favorite chinese restaurant. Décor is old and dated but who cares. We go there for the food and it’s taste and authentic. Highly recommend Jade Isle to anyone who is looking for a great chinese meal. Dim sum is served from steam heated carts on the weekends. On weekdays you can order dim sum from the menu.

Today I hope was an anomaly They had only 1 cart and it had none of their excellent steamed dim sum. The waitresses brought around some plates of steamed dim sum, but not to the white customers.
It took a lot of effort to get some brought over. It was very good
I hope they get their act back together.

This place looks like it is out of business from the outside and not much different on the inside. The service /​take out is excruciatingly slow. The place needs to be modernized and maintained. For those reasons I give the place only three stars.
The food on the other hand is excellent! Served a Chinese dinner to my family and extended family and everyone was saying how good the food was. It almost made it worth the LONG wait!

Authentic Chinese food that’s very good. Dim sum is delicious to. I gave it a 4 star because of the décor. They really need to fix this place up.

We go to Dim Sum Villa in New Providence two or more times a month now. We won’t return to Jade Isle after all. It was unimpressive.

Another nice visit tonight. My son looked forward to seeing the turtles before we even stepped inside.
The beef short ribs are a pretty good value, large dish for under $ 20. Tasty spicy flavor and tender but the cut is a bit fatty.
The beef with Chinese broccoli is consistently a good dish here.

I have to bump my rating for this restaurant where I have been eating since my parents used to bring me here almost 50 years ago, although this place is really in need of a makeover, or even just a good cleaning. The first thing you see when you walk in is an unlit room off to the side filled with junk and and cast-​off old appliances, along with a fish tank filled with live lobsters. Very incongruous.
I ordered take out on a Saturday night. They told me to come down in 30 min., but it was almost a full hour between the time I called and when my food was ready. There were people in the restaurant, but they weren’t that busy. Other reviewers have complained about the slow service. Obviously, they are understaffed.
However, most of the dishes are good, if not great, and there is authenticity to the place. I always see more Asians than Caucasians eating here. In fact, they have two sets of menus, one in English for round-​eyes, and a much more extensive one, in Chinese, for everyone else.
What brings me here is the full Polynesian bar. My gastronomically unadventurous wife, who is not crazy about Chinese food to begin with, is always willing to come here to imbibe. Get a couple of mai tai’s into her, and she’s content. Ancient Chinese saying: happy wife, happy life.