Jade Fountain Restaurant

Used to order from this place all the time till I moved out of the area. Tried it again today to discover that they no longer do a majority of the deals that are advertised on their website, so I ended up paying 50 $ for average sweat and sour pork, mediocre chow mein, god awful «chicken and vegetables» that was actually just soggy Bok choy with chicken scraps thrown in a container, thankfully at least the beef broccoli was good and meaty. Maybe update your online menus before changing the prices or inform customers on call that the menu has changed.

Amazing dim sum! So many options even for me who is picky. Definitely try the egg tarts they are the best!
The service is to be expected because this is how most dim sum restaurants work. Choose what you want as they come by.

The food is okay if you can’t get down to Chinatown. I warn against going here without 2 or more people as they seem really resentful of single diners here m

Decent food, moderate to high prices, but lacking in service.
Went on a Saturday evening and the place was busy busy with only two front of house staff who did everything from seating patrons, answering calls, bussing tables (or not…) and tending to tables. Severely understaffed… We had to wave them down to ask for a doggie bag and the bill. We waited about 20 minutes to get take out containers that we had to box ourselves and get the bill… Which I ended up going to the counter to pay.
For a place that charges $ 17 for a plate of leaves, I expected to get a bit attention. We order 3 family style dishes and received 2 of 3 within a reasonable time. By the time we received the last dish, we were all done with the first two. So frustrating when this happens and it ruined our meal.
The only reason I would return is due to the lack of choices in Victoria but I would probably consider take out next time.

I’m not sure what the other reviewers are talking about here, as this place is great, both food-​wise and service-​wise. Service has always been great (ok, sometimes they don’t bring you water right away, but that’s expected when they are busy), and the dim sum is very tasty! I go to this place on a regular basis, and I would not go anywhere else for Dim Sum in Victoria. Highly recommended!

Overall: I wouldn’t go back.
Food: The food was fine. Some items were great, others not so much. The pork siu mai tasted like spam, but the deep fried prawns (they were shaped like fingers) were delicious with the sweet chili sauce. The shrimp dumplings were also good.
Service: The service was less than expected. The maitre d/​host/​manager who seated us was less than friendly. Typically seen standing/​pacing between the host station and the bar, he could have come around to see if everything was alright or AT LEAST smiled and said goodbye as we left.
Service (cont.): So, our table didn’t have any soy sauce on it. Thats fine. But getting the attention of someone was easier said than done. I finally got the attention of one of the staff and asked if they had any low sodium soy sauce. She looked at me a little weird and repeated back «soy sauce?». It’s too bad — didn’t speak English well enough to understand my request.
Service (cont.): Something positive to be said was that the service was fast. The restaurant was full and there were constantly trollies coming by with food to choose from. Having said that, there wasn’t a huge amount of selection. We saw the same trolly/​tray go by several times.
What left a bad taste in our mouth: Green tea was brought to our table when we sat down (something I’ve come to expect from Chinese/​dim sum restaurants). However, I’ve never before seen in as a charge on the bill. It’s not the $ 2.35 (or whatever it was that bothered me), it was the fact that it was brought to our table without our request and then it showed up on our bill. What’s next? Charging for soy sauce?

Quick service, hot dishes and dim sum basics done well. Based mostly around seafood but the BBQ pork humbao was very tasty. The waitresses were sweet and I would probably give a four star if the host hadn’t stuck us in the back of the room in an ad-​hoc one benched booth with a stained, oversized table cloth but I guess them’s the breaks.

Next port of call, Victoria, B.C. stopped in for lunch and get out of the rain and a bite of Dim Sum which except for «pot stickers» my bride doesn’t care for.
Won ton soup very good as was the Schezwan beef.
Well now were off to our ship and back to Seattle tomorrow.

Food was decent, and so was the service. Given we were first in line… but as the place filled up, I noticed that the staff was pretty good about getting to every customer.
I’m pretty sure one of the employees cursed at us under her breath, but it’s whatever.

Good recommendation for Chinese

This is one of the more memorable dim sum places I have been to in Victoria since I have visited here many times in the past. The place is kind of small compared to most chinese restaurants with not many large tables which is usually the standard since most come with large parties. The interior was fancy looking with the chinese lanterns and nice bright lighting with dark wood furnishings.
When we arrived for lunch the place was totally packed and we had to wait a good 10 to 15 minutes before we got a table. The food came around quick with the ladies toting the dim sum carts even though the place was very busy. The dim sum itself was a little bland tasting, but wasn’t bad by any means. What I noticed was that they didn’t have any of the sauces you usually have on the table like soy or hot sauce.
They also have free wifi which is provided by the Red Lion hotel right next door to the restaurant.

The food is good. The service is random.
When we went in today, got a notice put on our car saying they would tow the car. They hadn’t opened yet and I was killing time by returning to my car to find this notice. The message: your dim sum may come with towing and impound charge. Maybe you should save the hassle and the $ 100. Get Dim Sum from downtown.

Yuck! It was recommended by a number of locals. We conclude this is probably the only place that claims to do dim sum in Victoria. We went at 1pm on Friday. There were lots of people there, but the food served from trays was cold. The food served from the steam cart was hot, but it was chewy, dense, and bland. We had a number of meat dumplings. The service seemed indifferent.

Ok I have mixed feelings about this place but the overall experience made me think twice about ever going here again. Food was good, not greasy dim-​sum, but WOW was the service bad. When we arrived, we were seated at a table with no plates, chopsticks or anything… No one came to get a drink order or anything. A couple of minutes later, the food starts rolling by and we are ordering dishes except noone seems to think we need any chopsticks or plates. The food is on the table but we can’t eat it or put it on a plate or have any soya sauce. I finally get up and grab the settings from the next table. The dishes are coming by but no one is offering us the typical sauces the sauces that usually accompany the dishes and we still have no tea or a beverage. Finally..

Having lived in Hong Kong and having a bit of an idea as to what a good Dim Sum can be I to have say we were really surprised.
This Dum Sum was as good or better than what we had in Hong Kong.
We went with a group of former Hong Kongers and we all agreed:
The best Dim Sum in Victoria.
We have been over 40 times yes forty and have never been disappointed.

Being a dim sum aficionado, i was very concerned when i moved back to Victoria and found out Kwong Tung had changed hands. I naturally gave it a try and it was nothing like I remembered. Then last year my GF and I bought a house not too far from the Jade Fountain. Now, I’ve been to the Fountain on Blanshard and Hillside a few times over the years and was never blown out of the water or anything and I knew it was the same owners. Shiza Minelli! Jade Fountain is HANDS DOWN the best dim sum I’ve ever had! I’m not some qwilo who sums up dim with sticky rice, har gao and shu mai. I’m half Chinese which means I got the best of both worlds growing up and this little hidden gem in the basement of a strip bar can define your Victoria dim sum experience. Service is fast as you would hope with dim sum as it’s all a la carte. As far as the race card goes, non existent. It’s a busy place and they love their regulars… (who in hospitality doesn’t? They’re the bread and butter of your business!) I saw Asians, half Asians (me), gwilos (including my gf) and even a Black guy (there’s like 9 in Victoria). All getting great service and thoroughly enjoying themselves and their food. If there’s discrimination there I haven’t seen it, and being in the hospitality business I can tell you the gwilo servers downtown who feel entitled to 30% because you chose their boss’ restaurant are far more discriminative towards Asians than Asians are to you.

Excellent dim sum, affordable and hot. As per normal dim sum is very busy and you need to be part of the action. If you don’t look like you are interested in food they won’t bother you. But if you are active in stoping the carts there is no service problem. Got our water and tea refilled a bunch of times. Salt and pepper squid were great! If you missed a dish you can ask a server to find it nicely. We had about 3 people looking for egg custards that I missed. Service is there but you won’t be waited on hand and foot. Would return!

Yum Yum Yum, my hankering for Dim Sum was definitely satisfied by our visit to Jade Fountain.
So why a three star review?
SERVICE…they have a tremendous opportunity here, although, based on the volume of business, I don’t imagine there’s much need to do anything but maintain the status quo. This is one of those situations where one may be inclined to overlook certain service issues because the food is that good.
As this was our first visit, we really weren’t prepared to be discriminated against for not being Asian… the Host attempted to seat Asian patrons ahead of us twice, but other people stepped in on our behalf to stop him from doing so… and, we had to get our own water and track down carts that would have otherwise not come our way.
Our efforts were rewarding by hot and wonderful food, but the overall experience was a little frustrating. Now that we know better, we will be able to affect our experience here the next time we go, as the food will indeed bring us back.
So, Jade Fountain, you can do better, but we don’t expect you will :) We do however Thank you for the great food, it was by far some of the best Dim Sum we’ve had.
PJ xo

We went into this place and it had a decent amount of people inside eating delicious looking food. We were seated and given menus but then were forgotten. We walked out after about 10 – 15 minutes. There were only a few (2 – 3) people tending to the entire place so it looked very understaffed. We saw people wait quite a while to get their food and drinks so we just left to avoid the hassle. The wait staff was avoiding all eye contact because they were so busy running back and forth. Maybe we just came at a bad time? I don’t like eating at places with bad service no matter how good the food is though.