House of Jade

The two-story space on Nekrasova Street is run by a team with Giallo Bistro and EZO Izakaya behind them. Alexander Grokhovsky, Polina Marinesko, and italy community founders Timur Dmitriev and Mikhail Sokolov built House of Jade as an antithesis to pompous Oriental restaurants: no heavy decor, no “Eastern” trappings in the usual sense. All that's left of Asia is the food. The interior was designed by studio Snob Architects: modular larch systems, German bentwood plywood chairs, a Cassina sofa, and a communal table with cult chairs by Swiss designer Bruno Rey. Overhead, ceiling fan blades turn slowly, and music plays from a vintage Pioneer unit through Bowers & Wilkins speakers. There are just over a hundred seats, with a layout that lets several parties of five to seven people avoid getting in each other's way. Dog-friendly, with a dog bed and a leash hook.

In the opinion of our restaurant guide's team, this is one of those cases where price and quality genuinely line up.

Chef Alexey Trofimov, who previously worked at Giallo Bistro and EZO Izakaya, runs the kitchen. The menu is drawn from Cantonese, Sichuan, Taiwanese, Hong Kong, and Japanese traditions — not as an eclectic mix, but as a deliberate geography with a clear flavor logic. The kitchen works with open flame and a scorching-hot wok: high heat and speed here aren't a stylistic choice but a method. The meal opens with a compliment of fried peanuts with five spices and anchovies, brought straight out of the glassed-in kitchen in full view of the room. The xiaochi section covers small bites: squid salad with pickled mustard, mussels with Shaoxing wine, crispy wings in sweet sauce. A separate section is devoted to dough — wontons, dim sum, and baozi. Noodles and rice are tossed in the wok, while poultry, fish, and meat are finished on the robata with umami sauces. The menu also has global hits — kung pao chicken and sweet-and-sour pork with pineapple.

Artem Gutko, formerly of Tiger Lily and Atelier Tapas & Bar, built the bar concept. The shelves are deliberately not overstocked: Taiwanese whisky, Vietnamese gin, baijiu, sake, and Asian liqueurs are chosen selectively. The non-alcoholic side offers curated Japanese, Chinese, and Taiwanese teas in different formats — cold brew in place of lemonades, plus a separate matcha-with-bamble section on fresh mandarin juice. On tap: local beer and light Chinese lager Tsingtao. The cocktail list is small but has no filler: Nitro Espresso Martini with popcorn-infused whisky and nitrogen, Mushroom Boulevardier with whisky, sesame oil, and shiitake-infused vermouth, Taipei Punch with Japanese tomato liqueur and passionfruit. Three highballs are on tap.

House of Jade works for a solo lunch, a dinner for two, or a loud group with a dog in tow. Plans include a secret room for events with pop-up formats. The spot on Nekrasova Street operates as a pan-Asian bistro with no pretensions to bohemian flair, but no compromises on quality either — that's exactly how the creators themselves define their ambition for the place.