Post #61247 by donhonyc on Thu, Nov 20, 2003 8:52 PM

Aloha!

Last weekend while on a short road trip I decided to check out one of my so far unexplored Tiki joints in Jersey. I have been to about 7 or 8 of the old and new Tiki places here in the New York/New Jersey area and wanted to se what JADE GARDEN in Westfield, NJ was all about. According to 'Tiki Road Trip' Jade Garden is a "wonderful Polynesian bar/restaurant. Pools of goldfish everywhere; very serious Tiki". Well my friends, I'm sorry to report that Jade Garden is nothing more than a Chinese take-out establishment. It would be a stretch to even call it a restaurant. Basically, it's a small storefront with a few tables in front of the counter that are rarely used. There isn't a damn thing that is Tiki about this place.

Now, I have taken into account that I could be wrong, because I didn't have my 'Tiki Road Trip' book with me, but I did look up the place on JT's Tiki Bar Review page on the net when I was at a Mac store during the trip. I took that info and went from there. When I got back home from the trip I looked it up in 'TRT' and I'm 99.9% sure that the info in the book for Jade Garden was the same info I followed to find the place. No dice, people. No dice.

There is a happy ending to this story however. Continuing back to NYC we stopped at the other Lee's Hawaiian Islander in Lyndhurst. To make a long story short, it was very cool. Definitley up there with Chan's. They were supposed to have a live hula show the night we were there but it was cancelled for some reason.

If anybody has any info on what the deal is with Jade Garden in Westfield, please...do tell!!! I'm guessing this was a typo or something in 'Tiki Road Trip'. Either that or the place just remodeled and turned into a take-out only since James was there while compiling the book.

Mahalo :drink:

[ Edited by: donhonyc on 2003-11-21 12:39 ]