Welcome back to Five Things, Racket’s recurring rundown of new, new-to-us, or otherwise notable Twin Cities restaurants.
Today we’re taking you inside Jade Dynasty, an ambitious new Chinese-American restaurant located in the former Fuji Ya space. This Lyn-Lake restaurant is huge, and so is the menu, so after warming our bones over hot pot and potstickers during one of February’s more frigid days, we’ve got five things to know before you go.
1. Bring Your Reading Glasses
If you’ve ever gotten dim sum before, they may have handed you a little gridded sheet that you fill out with your order. You decide what you want, and then write in a number next to the buns, noodle dishes, wontons, and soups you want delivered to your table.
Jade Dynasty has a similar system for weekend dim sum, but it might have been helpful during weeknight dinner hours, because this menu is no joke. It’s 60+ pages—we counted—with full-color pictures, spanning everything from congee to fried rice to a Golden Fried Garlic Seafood Mountain. (Eat your heart out, Cheesecake Factory!) After reading it front to back once, paging through it a second time felt like experiencing a whole new menu. (Wait, wait… do you remember seeing the Octopus with Spicy Salt and Pepper?) On a third run-through, I took pictures of dishes that sounded enticing, and we ended up making a list on our phones to keep track of everything we planned to order.
2. Order the String Beans
The very first page I photographed included Jade Dynasty’s Szechuan-Style Dry-Fried String Beans ($16); you could just tell from their aura they’d be good. The platter of blistered beans came steaming to our table, blackened ever so slightly in spots and filling the air with garlicky, peppery warmth. Eating them was like enjoying a pile of salty, savory snack chips in that you felt like you’d never get full—you just wanted to keep eating them until the whole plate had been polished off.
3. Jade Dynasty Brings the Heat
In a recent edition of the Heavy Table newsletter, James Norton wrote about hot food in a way that’s stuck with me. “The thing that I’ve become spoiled for and obsessed with isn’t an ingredient… It’s hot food in restaurants,” he wrote. “Not just hot, but piping hot.” The sentiment has lingered as I’ve dined out since, especially during the winter, because it does seem like a lot of food at restaurants is more warm than hot these days. Or it’s hot, but not hot-hot, with no visible steam or sizzle.
It wasn’t just the green beans that hit the table noticeably hot at Jade Dynasty. Everything from the Hot and Sour Soup ($5) to Pan-Fried Potstickers ($10) was trailed by a plume of steam, served in vessels our server warned would be hot to the touch.
Hottest of all? Jade Dynasty’s Aromatic Curry Chicken Hot Pot ($20, pictured up top), which arrived bubbling on a portable gas stove. This wasn’t just the hottest dish, but my favorite of the night. I kept adding another small scoop of rice to my plate to finish off the curry I’d dished out, and then one more scoop of curry to finish the rice, until I was positively bursting.
4. These Guys Know Chinese Food
The Star Tribune’s Nancy Ngo has a really nice story (gift link) about Jade Dynasty owners Chuen “Paul” Wu and Eric Zeng, who’ve known each other since the 1990s. As the owners of legendary downtown Minneapolis restaurant Nankin and the original Hong Kong Noodles in Stadium Village, respectively, they’re teaming up here to bring a little bit of the authentic Cantonese and Chinese-American dishes each became known for to Lyn-Lake.
Ngo reports that generations of regulars from their former restaurants have already dined with Jade Dynasty since it opened in January, with Wu telling her, “Hopefully, it will [continue to] be a meaningful place for all generations.”
5. It’s a Restaurant of Contrasts
Jade Dynasty contains multitudes. The space is massive, but it feels cozy rather than cavernous. Its dining room feels fancy, but I wouldn’t feel embarrassed about swinging by the counter to grab takeout. (In fact, I plan to, soon, since too much of the giant menu went unexplored during our first visit)
And perhaps most importantly, while our orders arrived expeditiously, we never felt rushed. In fact, we overheard the pair at the table next to us saying they’d like to wait a while after their first round of food before ordering more—it’s the kind of place where you feel comfortable doing that.
Jade Dynasty
Address: 600 W. Lake St., Minneapolis
Hours: 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday; 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Saturday
