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| - I have to say I am quite pleasantly surprised by this place (in a good way)!
This restaurant is located around the York University (steeles and keele) area, and this is not exactly an area teeming with lots of easily accessible good eats. I would imagine you only go to this area to eat because you work in the area, or you make a special trip to a restaurant in this area which is what we did tonight.
There are not really any residential areas nearby or other places you can go to (supermarket for example), but we were in the area (Ikea) and found this place through Yelp.
We arrived around 6:30 on a Friday evening and was very pleasantly greeted. This location is nice and clean and actually REALLY easy to find.
When driving along Steeles, just look for the hugeee neon flashing sign in a plaza. Yup thats Royal Jade.
Did I mention that the people that served us was super nice? Yup just saying it again.
My wife and I ordered 3 dishes and a drink.
The Nasi Gorang was tasty and full of good stuff (lots of fried egg, shrimp and meat). They definitely did not skimp out on the "good stuff" in this dish, though it was not exceptional. I dont mind getting it again, but I would rather try something else on the menu next time.
What stood out more was everything else. The crispy beef was actually super tasty and the consistency was excellent. We have been to other restaurants and ordered "crispy" beef before and only ended up getting "soggy" beef. For this dish, it felt like this restaurant fried and prepared the beef first, then tossed it into the sauce and gave it a quick stir around. This allowed the beef to remain nice and crispy, but at the same time nicely coated.
Other restaurants I assume either do the same thing but cook it in the sauce too long - therefore making it soggy. Or just toss it all in together and cook it up and call it "crispy" beef but its not. This place is actually really "crispy" beef and they get it right.
The chicken pakoras were excellent here. We have been to a few Hakka style restaurants (Lin garden being the one we end up going back to the most) because they have good pakoras with lots of heat.
Royal jade makes their pakoras with lots of meat and very little breading. Basically when you bite into the pakora its crispy, yet remains very juicy with the chicken inside. Lin Garden tends to have a LOT of breading to make their pakoras "look" big but they arent really. And usually lin garden you can get about maybe 6 "large" pakoras for much more then Royal Jade. Royal jade pakoras are a better deal quantity wise, and taste wise. My wife especially enjoyed the green cilantro/parsley sauce on the side with the pakoras.
The pakoras were nice, juicy and carried a bit of heat. The contrast in flavors by dipping it in the cilantro/parsley sauce is really unique tasting and addictive we had to ask for a second helping of sauce.
I also got "lassi" (sweet flavored) on the side. This reminded me of sweetened kefir if you have had it before. This definitely helped me keep my food down as some of it really packed a kick of heat! Having some dairy to reduce the heat helped!
All in all, I would definitely come back again to try a few more dishes. This place is a bit out of the way and is a bit of a hike to get to, but honestly so is Lin Garden for us.
Im looking forward to my next visit and would definitely recommend this place as a worthy try.
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