There is no better business than opening up a restaurant or a snack in Lebanon, however the latest trend is to come up with a very fancy place that attracts customers but serves crappy or average food.
One of them is the recently newly opened Chinese restaurant called the Jasmine Room. It is situated on the Jal el Dib highway and looks very fancy from the outside. I’ve been wanting to try it for a while and finally went there with my gf on Saturday.
Unlike what is stated in this review, it does look a lot like every other Chinese restaurant and resembles a bit ChopSticks! It even has that large rounded table in the middle that rotates so that you can hold like your small buffet.
We were out on a Saturday night and found a table without reservation. The chairs were comfy and the tables were not too close to each others. While checking out the menu, i noticed on the first page set menus for 4, 5 and 6 people. They varied from 200,00LL till 400,000LL or something like that. I don’t know much about food menus but putting such big numbers on the first page of your menu can push customers away.
The menu list was very similar to every other Chinese restaurant, same appetizers (Shrimp dumblings, Spring Rolls etc ..) and hot dishes.
We ordered the following:
– Vegetable Spring Rolls
– A steamed rice bowl with corn (It didnt come with corn but the waitress said she can add corn to it).
– A sweet and sour chicken platter without the green peppers and onions that come with it.
– Noodles with beef platter.
Few minutes later, the spring rolls came and they were not good at all and small as well. The hot dishes then followed and with them came major dissapointment.
– Steamed rice came without corn. They were unable to drop few pieces of corn into the bowl. It is very demanding indeed.
– Sweet and Sour chicken came with the green pepper and onions. The waitress realized the matter as soon as she got to the table, so she apologized, went back to the kitchen, took out the onions and green pepper and came back with it. How did i know that? Simply because the chicken and the sauce smelled like onions and peppers still, but i did not tell her anything.
– The noodles platter my gf ordered was disgusting. Noodles were not well done and they had onions all over them. We asked them to take it back and we ended up not paying for it.
That was pretty much my experience at the Jasmine Room and i am quite sure will be my last one. I thought for a while that ChopSticks is no longer that good, but it is great compared to this one.