Not all the gems sparkle at Crystal Jade Palace

Not all the gems sparkle at Crystal Jade Palace

By John Aglionby

JAKARTA (JP): Any restaurant that not only has its lobby seats
filled regularly but also the overflow area outside must be a
quality establishment, or so one would think. But, as with many
things in life, appearances can be deceptive.

I thought I had circumvented the popularity of the Crystal
Jade Palace, located behind the Fashion Cafe on the ground floor
of Wisma 46, by both booking in advance and arriving on time.

No such luck. Not only had the front desk given my table to
someone else, I was still waiting half an hour later. Perhaps the
management can afford to be so hopelessly inefficient and chaotic
because there are 50 floors of hungry office workers with few
alternative lunch spots slaving away above them. I, however, was
not impressed.

Three days later, I ventured back. This time, we got past the
lobby and to a table. The fact that we had to ask for the menus
once we got there seemed of little consequence after the triumph
of actually getting a seat.

Two words of advice at this point. Take a jacket or sweater.
The sports hall of a room -- there are no nooks and corners to
have a quiet candlelit dinner in a room decorated in styles from
1920s art deco to 1990s functional -- was freezing. We were
covered in goosebumps before we knew it, which the never-ending
supply of tea served by overattentive waitresses did little to
remedy.

The other tip would be not to go with anyone indecisive, or
you'll be there forever. Fifteen minutes after arriving, we were
still ploughing through the 143 items on the regular menu and 32
varieties of Dim Sum.

As it turned out, we might as well not have bothered because
we ended up with some dishes we had not ordered and instead were
served items we had taken care to avoid.

Once the teething problems are ironed out, the service should
improve. The snag is that the quality of the food -- styled as
Hong Kong/international -- varied from exquisite to awful, with a
good dose of mediocrity in between.

Most of the various Dim Sum selections were tasty and combined
well together. The spring rolls had a subtle, tangy flavor,
although the accompanying sauce tasted bitter and of not very
much at all; the deep-fried Wan-Ton in a sweet and sour sauce was
excellent; the deep fried mixed meat dumpling was a little
stodgy, but offset the other dishes well and another dish none of
us could identify. We certainly hadn't ordered it and could
detect chicken and mushrooms, but nothing on the menu consisted
of chicken and mushrooms.

There were no such identity problems with the final Dim Sum
dish. It was clearly chicken feet, although they had definitely
not come from an Indonesian chicken, as they were far too fatty.
The sauce was a brown jelly-like mass with far too high a
monosodium glutamate (MSG) content for my liking.

Our noodles with crab meat and dry shrimp proved to be as
anonymous as the dish we hadn't ordered -- or perhaps we weren't
brought noodles with crab meat and dry shrimp.

Never having been to Hong Kong, I was not aware of what the
serving sizes meant. There were three on offer: small, medium and
large. Unfortunately, we were not told that "small" meant large,
"medium" enormous and the large portions probably require two
waiters to bring them to the table.

The only way to get a reasonably small helping is to go for
the snacks. The marinated duck meat Chiu Chow style would have
been the a main course in most other restaurants, and was as good
as any duck I have eaten in Jakarta.

The same could be said for the deep-fried prawns with garlic.
They were cooked simply, but rolled gently out of their shells
and down one's throat, leaving one wanting more.

Equally impressive was the fried rice with chicken tomato
sauce over one half and cream of prawn sauce covering the other.
The MSG content was just about right, the flavors were not
overpowered by spices and indeed this too could easily be a meal
in itself.

We did not fare so well with the rest of the pot-luck meal.
The overcooked vegetables took one back to school-dinner days;
the stewed brisket in a claypot was fatty and swamped in MSG and
the fresh abalone and sea cucumber with dry shrimp roe was
stunningly bland.