Jujube of Chapel Hill

Hands down one of the best restaurants I have been to in a while. I will admit, I am a huge fan of asian cuisine, and an upscale, though unpretentious, asian fusion restaurant such as Jujube is an ideal restaurant for me. Everything that we ordered was bold, had good-sized portions, and full of flavor, and it seemed like the other menu options were no different.

We started out with fried calamari and pork belly dumplings. Fried calamari is a staple on many menus, probably because it is hard to mess-up, however at the same time it is not usually a dish that is outstanding. Well, this calamari was outstanding. One of the things that made it so good was the "roasted ginger aioli and scallion oil" that came on the side. We ordered the pork belly dumplings because 1) dumplings are arguably my favorite food and 2) because nearly everyone else on Yelp raved about them. They were very good, but nothing extraordinary as they seemed slightly one-dimensional in flavor.

For the main course I ordered the Fried Chicken with XO sauce, garlic studded grits, and pea shoots. Ridiculously good. Fried chicken is not something you typically see on an upscale asian menu, however it was amazing. The XO sauce that was drizzled over the chicken is actually the "sauce", or broth, from their "Angry Seafood" soup which added a nice kick (the "Angry Seafood" soup/stew was very spicy) to the chicken. The creamy garlic grits were so amazing they melted in your mouth.

I had been to Jujube many years ago and do not remember it being anywhere near as good as it was this time. I think they have improved tremendously recently and it is definitely worth going if you haven't been in a while or if you have never been at all!

Jujube of Chapel Hill