Jade Garden

When it comes to group projects, combined collective experience usually predicts success; which is why it took a crack team of nuclear scientists to create the Manhattan Project, and a crack team of Muppets to take Manhattan. Utilizing that motto through comestibles, Jade Garden.

Opened in the old Big Fish by three area friends/restaurateurs with a combined eight eateries between them, JG dubs itself a "Seafood Restaurant" but serves up a wide array of Cantonese favorites in a crisp, 96-seat, two-room space that boasts white tablecloths, flat screens, a veritable forest of corn plant trees, the requisite foyer full of fish tanks, alarmingly blank walls, and pleasingly pink napkins. Fresh seafood from the seemingly limitless menu includes pan fried oysters tossed w/ginger and scallions, squid cooked w/ green peppers and onions in a black bean sauce, and a spicy sautéed dry-fried jumbo shrimp taken live from the tank and served w/ the head attached -- giving an awesome excuse to show off your adorable pocket guillotine. JG also offers dishes like a dried shrimp and vermicelli hot pot mixed w/ winter melon, fresh stir-fried pea pod stems cut by the staff each afternoon, and a mysterious braised duck cooked with "Eight Delights" -- not to be confused with the timeless Rick Moranis/Artie Lange classic, "Honey, I Ate the Lights".

If you're one of the few people who go to Chinatown before midnight, they'll roll out a selection of 13 entirely recognizable Chinese dishes (Sweet and Sour Pork, Kung Pao Chicken, Orange Beef, etc) plated with Japanese salad or miso soup, fried rice or lo mein and, of course, French fries -- proving the only thing that trumps collective experience is single-minded gluttony.