Opulent Crystal Jade restaurant off to a rocky start
How can a group that sank $14 million into an interior — probably the most ever spent on a restaurant in the Bay Area — come off as an amateur production?
The grand entrance, which, thanks to the vision of designer Ken Fulk, is truly spectacular, isn’t well marked if you come in from the parking garage, so you may end up in the bar wondering where the restaurant is.
The hosts seem like a gaggle of high schoolers working to raise money for their pep club.
On one visit, servers aimlessly walked through the dining room, trying to figure out where to deliver their plates.
Much of it is made up of Chinese greatest hits, including kung pao chicken with cashews ($16), syrupy sweet and surprisingly bland despite a profusion of dried red peppers.
Roast chicken ($17 for half) looked as if it had spent time in the fryer but stopped short of becoming fried chicken.
The deep-fried chicken ($15) consisted of bite-size chunks of meat with a soft, almost a souffle-like texture, buried under a mound of dried chiles.
When they arrived — one on each plate for the five of us — the manager snapped on rubber gloves like a doctor preparing for a proctology exam and went from person to person to shell the prawns.
The staff seems inexperienced and tone-deaf to the market, which is surprising, considering that this restaurant group has 22 restaurants in 21 Asian cities.
Controlling interest in the company was recently purchased by LVMH, the French company that owns Louis Vuitton, Dom Pérignon and Hennessy.
Even though the restaurant was mostly filled with Asians, dishes like ma po tofu ($15) seemed strangely Westernized, sweet rather than displaying the characteristic numbing effect of peppercorns.
The basket of fried noodles came separately from the assorted seafood and vegetable dish ($18), and tasted as if it had been made well in advance; the mix of cuttlefish, shrimp and white fish was overpowered by a viscous gravy.
Instead of a dish that I hoped would be similar to the abalone with egg white I remember fondly from Jai Yun, this dish turned out to be a watery mound of limp whites with a few mushy chunks of seafood.
Given the luxurious surroundings, I also expected more composed dishes, like the Perfectly Seared Scallops With Special Crystal Jade X.O. Sauce ($19).
Four scallops are lined up in the center of the plate on a pad of taro, with six golden fried rounds of tofu crowned with shreds of dried seafood on either side and crunchy bok choy on both ends.
A more rustic and equally satisfying preparation was the beef brisket in clear soup ($16), where the braised slices of meat were layered on turnips in a broth infused with cassia bark, star anise and amomum tsoko, a ginger-like herb.
[...] the best dishes I had were the most basic — double-boiled clear chicken soup with a few chunks of meat ($8 per person), pea shoots with garlic and fermented bean curd ($18), and bok choy ($12) with the same seasonings.
Fried rice ($19) filled with tiny shrimp and bits of pork is also one of the few dishes I’ll remember favorably.
Yet three visits weren’t enough to eat my way through the dinner menu, so there may be some hidden gems.
[...] we ordered a portion on one visit, but it never arrived.
Most of the refined wood tables don’t have a lazy Susan and are too small to handle more than a couple of dishes at one time.
On other visits we ordered an excellent walnut puree with mochi balls ($8) anchored in the center, and slippery pomegranate jelly spooned into a stemmed glass with marinated fruit ($7).
Fulk’s talent is evident in the sexy look, which features rows of curved leather banquettes and a side room that could double as an exclusive men’s club.