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Empire Chinese Cuisine
Category: Restaurants Chinese Dim Sum Dim Sum [Edit]
8251 Alexandra RdRichmond, BC V6X 1C3
Neighbourhood: Golden Village
(604) 303-9780
- Price Range:
-
$$
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Parking:
- Private Lot
- Attire:
- Casual
- Good for Groups:
- Yes
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
- Takes Reservations:
- Yes
- Delivery:
- No
- Take Away:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Good For:
- Lunch, Dinner, Brunch
- Alcohol:
- Beer & Wine Only
- Has TV:
- No
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
8 reviews for Empire Chinese Cuisine
8 reviews in English
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Review from Simon K.
3/6/2012 1 Check-in Here
A big feast is what I had on this night, a birthday party for my mother's bosses daugher (the 100 day Chinese tradition). A 10 course massive meal, if you have ever eaten one of these styles (think Chinese wedding!) then you know what your stomach is in for, fine food, that your stomach cannot say no to, but after your done, you sometimes wished you didn't overly do.
When you come to this restaurant, you realize that it is pretty big, long is the word I would use for it. It has it's own parking lot that stretches to the back for a good amount of parking for all the patrons who come here to eat. I have not come here in a good 3 years, and funny thing, the last time I was here was for a wedding, and once I walked into the meal, the person who got married was here, talk about small world. The restaurant sectioned an area for our party of 8 tables on the left side. I did not realize that this restaurant had two sets of washrooms, one on the far right side (the other eating area) and in the center, cause if you were sitting where we were sitting, and had to go to the other end to use the washroom, that would have been a far walk.
The meal was pletiful, and well timed, there was a good amount of time between each dish to eat, rest a little, and gear up for the next big plate. The usual suspects showed up at my dinner, steamed fish, chicken, cold plate, abalone, shark's fin, fried noodles, crab claws, lobster and some greens (just to name a few plates there). I can say that all the dishes were consistent, with the shark's fin standing out, as they are served in individual small clay pot bowls, not from one big bowl where they are scooping it up for you and everything is mixed in like one stew.
The cold plate at the beginning was fine, except for the meats, they were on the chewy side, where you really needed to mangle it in your mouth, and the baked tapioca dessert at the end was a little off in taste (I sense a hint of sourness!), but they were all prepared and presented well. If you need a big restaurant to throw a party, or wedding, this could be one of your options, and they got their own parking lot (it's hard enough to find parking in Richmond around this stretch!). I like how they can subsection the restaurant, and that there are two different areas for washrooms. They have all the high end Chinese Seafood you would expect from any high end place. -
Review from Ninette C.
12/29/2011
I never thought I'd see the day I'd have bad dim sum in Richmond!! I came here with my family. Our thoughts on some of the food:
-Seafood congee: needed more flavor
-Vegetarian steamed dumplings: I thought this would have chives in it but it was full of mushy mushrooms. :(
-Seafood salad spring rolls: these only have shrimp so I don't know why they're called seafood. Also have way too much salad dressing.
-Mushrooms wrapped in steamed rice noodles: not smooth enough
-Crispy fish cakes with corn: I thought this was one of the better meals, but my parents said it didn't have enough of a springiness to it.
-Mango pudding: the best dish in my opinion. You have to be really bad to screw that up!
-Hot sauce: not what I wanted! It was the cheap kind. We ended up having t get XO sauce which cost an extra $2. Wth.
The prices seem high at first but its because the portions are huge.
Things I liked about it were that you mark down the dishes you want, a format I much prefer over the traditional cart pushing. I also liked the variety.
The truth is, there's so many options for dim sum in Richmond, just pass on this one. -
Review from Theresa W.
Vancouver, BC
8/16/2011 6 photos
Being the frugal Chinese that I am, I'm always partial to restaurants that have the discount option for early morning eaters. So when we gave this place a ring and they told us it's 20% off if you order before 11am, we were sold.
We squeezed ourselves into the restaurant, fighting off old ladies who were trying to get ahead of us at the seating booth (ah, the dim sum experience!), and finally got ourselves a large table (it could fit four easily) with some quick tea service. The restaurant is actually quite small, but it's well kept and looks very nice from the inside and outside. It's a sheet ordering system (meaning you check things off on a piece of paper and they bring it to you), which made it harder for me to see which items were popular.
If you don't read Chinese, ask a waiter what the weekly special dim sum is (located in the top right of the ordering sheet and is written entirely in Chinese) - those are usually pretty good. The food here is decent: the pork + perserved egg congee was flavourful and thick, the pork meatballs were okay, and the deep fried crab claws with shrimp paste only because we don't see it on dim sum menus often (even though this item didn't count towards the 20% off). We also ordered a seafood dumpling with mango + squash, which had a great flavour to it (with cilantro), and a deep fried chicken mango dumpling, one of the winners of the trip.
The food overall is good, and despite being super full on our six dishes I eyed longingly at the all the other dishes being brought to other tables and secretly wished for a larger stomach. Service was good, our teapot was refilled quickly and despite the fact that we sat there for a long time eating and chatting, we never felt rushed to leave. I wouldn't mind coming back to try a few more of the items on their menu!Listed in: Richmond!
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Review from Stephen Y.
Richmond, BC
5/23/2011 1 Check-in Here
Went here for dinner with the family last weekend. They had a ongoing special which included the daily soup, half a crab, fish (which was tilapia that night), lotus-leaf wrapped fried rice, lettuce wrap with duck, seasonal vegetables with pan-fried scallops and of course, red bean soup. There was decent value in getting the special, however, I noticed that 80% of the place ordered the same thing! Basically, the kitchen staff were prepping everything together, so the dishes themselves lacked a bit a taste and you had to wait a little longer for dishes to come out.
The daily soup was of herbal variety, I liked it but my pickier, younger siblings did not. The crab was only average and I'm pretty sure it was a little less than half of a large crab. It was prepared decently though, with lots of green onions and garlic. The lettuce wrap with duck was good, except that it had barely any duck meat in there! There was probably around 1/3 of a duck breast worth of meat in the dish...now I know why they were pushing the specials to everyone...they certainly pushed the profit margins higher and I'm not a fan of any establishment trying to rip me off.
The lotus-wrapped rice was good, lots of chinese sausage, mushrooms and the stick texture made it quite filling. Vegetables (snap peas) with scallops were okay, but again, hardly enough scallops to go around for a table of 6.
Overall, the meal was only okay and I don't think I'll come back here and order the specials they hawk on us again. -
Review from lee k.
2/6/2011 1 photo
I was invited to a banquet for a baby party last year over there. I was impressed with their quality of food, and the service was excellent.
This trip we tried their set menu for 6 at $268 Canadian (1 US $ only worth 0.975 the day I visited there) for dinner. The place was all packed on a Saturday evening!
Once again I was happy with the selections: Lobsters, scallop with dried oyster, duck, fried sticky rice and a few vegetable dishes, and sweet red bean dessert....
We added the individual bowls of Sharks fin soup that they heated up on a butane stove in the dinning room (extra $ cost, find out yourself). That made the dinner perfect.
Will return again when we visit Richmond again. -
Review from DineOutOften C.
Vancouver, BC
11/14/2011
Sorry - posting this from my 2010 experience - thought I already posted it then.
To start with, I am Chinese and eat out at least 10 times a week, so I am very familiar with what they are supposed to do at Chinese restaurants.
We saw on the newspaper that they had Alaskan King Crab special for thirteen dollars a lb, so to make sure they would not pull the false advertising or restrictions on us, I called and inquired about the special price and they confirmed that it was indeed that promotional price and I made a reservation.
When 5 of us showed up, we ordered Alaskan King Crab and they told us that it would be more like twenty four dollars a lb. I told them that I called in advance and was told that there was the promotional price, and they said it was only for crabs which were under 5 lbs. Having had at least 20 Alaskan King Crab in my life, that was clearly a joke - a real Alaskan King Crab does not come under 5 lbs. The waiter then showed us what people would get for below 5 lbs. It was not a King Crab - it is another species of crab which is bigger than the regular crabs. However, since we set out to eat Alaskan King Crab, we agreed to pay the premium price for about 9 pounds and had the real Alaskan King Crab anyway. This is where we made the mistake - we showed them that we could afford it and they got greedy to gyp us further beyond the King Crab which costed two hundred somethng dollars. We continued our ordering of soup, vegetables and black cod hotpot. The waiter then suggested that we should have seabass instead of the black cod hotpot, and we can order a 2-dish seabass combo. We thought it was also fish, and it was probably good because he recommended it. They came show us the live Alaskan Crab, but did NOT show us the seabass, so we thought maybe the fish was not fresh or whole.
We finished eating the soup and king crab - not amazing food and the king crab looks less than 9 lbs, but okay, and after waiting for 45 very long mins, we finally saw the two dishes for seabass. Oh my goodness - these two dishes are HUGE - definitely not reasonable for my table. I suddenly noticed that they did cook a whole fish for us, but didn't show us the fish live, so we could not tell whether it was alive or it was HUGE for my table of 5 (2 seniors, 2 adults and 1 child). If this is not dishonestly lack of integrity, I don't know what is. As expected, when I saw the bill, the seabass was 4 lbs. For those who are not familiar, a 3.5 lb fish is used for a table of 10 during banquet, and this restaurant decided (without telling/showing us) that my table of 3.5 adults (senior and child is about 0.5 adult) should have 9 lbs of Alaskan King Crab followed by 4 lbs of seabass, in addition to the soup and vegetables we were ordering. We must look like very hungry huge eaters since I am only a 100-lb myself. Of course, the seabass was not cheap per lb, so in the end, the bill was like five hundred dollars. I packed some of the seabass home in the end to not waste it.
It is not that we don't have expensive dinner, but this has been the most unenjoyable and shocking five-hundred dinner that I have had. We were just expecting to have a nicer than average dinner on a weekday and ended up being gyp'ed by these people intentionally. There are way too many good, if not better, Chinese restaurants around - there is no need for me to support a dishonest restaurant as such. The sister restaurant, Empire seafood, also had the same false advertising. I will absolutely not return for dinner on my own accord - I will take my hard-earned money somewhere else and support people who don't set out to cheat their customers. -
Review from Brian W.
7/22/2010
DIM SUM!! Large portions (aka very fat shu mai, har gow, etc.).
Chicken feet were only okay-- they were still pretty decent for just "ok". Beef ball had orange rind in them, not something i cared for.
Pricing wasn't all that cheap per dish, but accounting for the fact that the dim sum were big fat pieces instead of tiny little ones or even regular sized ones more than made up for it. And the eggplant! ZOMG GOOD... -
Review from Annie M.
Vancouver, BC
Dim sim are all over the places in Richmond. We just wanted to try another one today, that's why we picked Empire Chinese.
I thought most of Chinese dim sim restaurants in Richmond would be the same and should have quality of foods.
Hmm... may be I'm wrong. We (8 of us) went there around 12.30, however, they were not full on Sunday. Kind of surprise us and we waited for them to clean and set up the table in 5 mins.
We probably too hungry and ordered too many dim sims to try:
Steamed prawn dumplings - Pretty standard, but, not hot enough when it served
Steamed pork and raddish dumplings - the pork was quite fatty
Steamed spare ribs - Ok
Streamed sticky rice wrap - Huge sticky rice
Streamed beef tripe - Tasty
Deep fried shrimp pasted with tofu & egg plants - Greasy but good
Steamed BBQ pork buns - I didn't try but didn't look good
Deep fried pork dumplings - very good
Streamed pork with pig stomach - a bit try and the pork didn't taste good
Deep fried prawn with bean curd - OK
Steamed rice roll in fish paste - It was awful, the fish paste too soaky.
Chow mein in soy sauce - It didn't look attractive
Pan fired rice roll in soy sauces - It's tasty and came in big portion
Deep fried crab prawn pincers - Taste very good and crispy
Stir fried turnip cake in XO sauce - over deep fried and no XO sauce taste
Oyster & minced pork in soup rice - That's good.
The services were great.
