Emperor Fine Chinese Cuisine

Dim sum is ²⁄₅ and dinner is ⁴⁄₅
I went recently on a Sunday around noon. They have a dim sum special where all S, M, L items are less than $ 3 which is great (and it doesn’t need to be before 11am). However, the food quality suffered and the food came out lukewarm. We ordered over $ 200 worth of food and there wasn’t anything that stood out. Because they were busy, the servers often forgot our requests. The restaurant charged us for dishes that never came, and it took us asking a few servers before the issue was fixed.
I’ve been here a couple of times for dinner. On weeknights, they often have daily specials including Peking Duck for only $ 19.99 (I believe it’s a Monday special).
I also had my family celebration here and booked 7 tables in the private room. The restaurants lights were off at 530pm although the sign at the front said they were opened. The owner said that the waiters come back on their shift at 6pm. Note: It’s best to eat dinner after 6pm there.
We ordered the special King Crab dinner set menu and added a few extra dishes. They showed us the crab before cooking it which was cool. The food came out at a great pace, nicely presented, hot and the dishes were all flavourful. The servers were attentive and got everything that my guest and I requested. They were accommodating and allowed us to bring our own music.
My husband and I were happy we chose this restaurant for the celebration. If their dim sum food and service could match what we experienced for dinner, they would do much better.

I’m giving this place a 2 star now after having dim sum this past weekend. It was quite disappointing. The prices have slightly increased and the food quality has decreased. Some of the dishes were quite bland, even the fried taro dumpling with pork! The service wasn’t as quick as before and the atmosphere wasn’t very pleasant. Although this couldn’t have been controlled by the restaurant, but when we went, customers around us were either coughin without covering their mouths or blowing their noses. I think I have to find a new place for dim sum now!

Average for mediocre dim sum. They do have specials tho. On a Sunday afternoon around 1:30 everything was charged as a small which was nice so we got to order a lot of large dishes for the price of small.
They did change their pineapple pork buns portions tho which is my fav thing here. A year ago they used to serve it in 4 buns now they only have 3. Disappointed since I usually dim sum with my family of 4.
Will come back tho. Convenient location. Lots of parking.

Great Dim Sum — Fresh and plentiful
My husband and I drove by while out on business in the area, saw the 2.99 dim sum special sign and thought why not. We we loved every dish we ordered — freshly made and delicious with left overs to take home. I was kind of surprised at the other reviews being slight negative — we would gladly go back again and while a distance away, may be our new favourite din sum place.

My family and I used to be regulars around here. During our last visit, we ordered a set meal. The food that were given to us was barely enough to feed our family of five, even though the menu stated that it was for six. Also, we ordered 3lb of lobster and we mainly got shells with very little meat. When we complained to the waitresses, we were only given dirty looks and quiet murmurs amongst the waitresses instead of fixing the issue.
In addition, they were so secretive about their wifi password that only one waitress in the entire restaurant knew it and she insisted on entering it into each phone at our table instead of just saying it out loud so we can all type it in, making the process a lot more efficient.
The last straw was when they charged us for tips AFTER tax. This is illegal because tips should always be given before tax, unless their service was outstanding. This will be the last time that my family and I visit this restaurant, don’t waste your money here!

Came here for a wedding and their menu was decent. While the food was not outstanding, it was good and satisfying. Each dish was well portioned for the table and the service was prompt and efficient.
I wouldn’t go out of my way to come back here but I wouldn’t be opposed to going here if I was in the area.

Came here for a multi-​course dinner for a large family gathering. I have to say that some of the dishes were a hit, and some of the dishes were a complete miss. Overall, I didn’t mind the restaurant, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to come here.
The restaurant is very, very big. There was a wedding going on on one side, and our event on the other. There is fish tanks, which I am never a fan of. No one wants to see animals in fish tanks while eating what came out of those fish tanks. No one wants to eat a steak while staring at a cow…
Dishes I liked included lobster (surprisingly, it was really good), shrimp balls, desert.
What I didn’t like? seafood soup, pork, chicken, vegetables.
Washroom was big.
Service was good. Always was around, and kept the tea hot.

I still come here because the food is good. I’ve up the stars based on the quality of food.

Came here on a Sunday around 9:30am for dim sum. I like going to dim sum early because of the Early Bird specials /​usually there’s a long line if you go around 10−11am. But at Emperor, there was no reason to come early. 9:30am and the restaurant was empty except for a few tables. 10:30am and the restaurant was around 1/3−½ full…
Service was good, very attentive (probably because there weren’t that many people yet)
Food quality was pretty average. nothing really stood out.
Price was decent– $ 3 for S, M, L dishes
Sticky rice in lotus leaf was not good. Neither was the xiao long bao (they came to our table cold). I do not recommend.
What’s good about Emperor is that they put their menu up on their website for you to check out before going!

I’ve been here so often with the family, it’s ridiculous.
Dimsum is Average with a capital A. The standouts would be a bitter melon dish with the salty egg crumbled on top, but that’s a special price. I order the usual spare ribs in black bean sauce, har gow. Average average.
The décor is very dated, with ceiling lights looking very 90s. The ceiling is also very low, so it’s not pleasant sitting here. Worse than that, my phone never has reception in the inner half of the restaurant! GASP, I know, but in this day and age, it’s ridiculous to me!
The family has since chosen other locations to satisfy our weekly dimsum needs, so I don’t expect to be back here.

The dimsum all tastes great and the setting is very pretty!
The only thing is that it’s on the pricy side of dimsum, at 2.68 for S, M, L dishes and 5.90 for XL and 6.90 for Specials. But the food isn’t thaaaat high quality enough to cost so much more than other dim sums.
However, the service is really good and friendly, there’s constantly people walking around removing empty dishes, refilling teapots and giving you new plates. So that was great. It was nice to come here for a nicer gathering

I primarily come here for the dim sum, been to one wedding banquet.
They still charge $ 2.68 for s/​m/​l dim sum all day and weekends except holidays, but they have recently changed their menu… and alot that disappoints me. They still have the staples such as har gow which is plump full of shrimp but the wrapper is pretty weak, but they’ve taken out some good dishes and added in special order ones, that cost $ 5 – 8.
but it’s still the cheapest one in town!

Haven’t eaten here for dinner for 1 year and was in the area to give it another try. Their wednesday night BBQ pork deal for $ 6 was terrible, dry and lacking flavour. Free soup was too watery. The beef filet in sweet sauce had some overly thick pieces that were as tough as leather. Shrimps stir fried w/​cashews and celery was the only decent dish, but was a bit too light on the salt. Pea shoots stir fried also lacked any flavour or wok hay. Dessert was the only passable dish of the night. Service was slow, even though only about ½ the restaurant was full by 8pm. The waiters were mostly focussed on either the larger tables or regular patrons that they knew by their last names, and we were mostly ignored. A real let down, most likely my last time here.

This is a review for the dim sum lunch only.
Emperor Fine’s dim sum is generally solid. The quality of the individual dishes ranges from good to mediocre.
BEST:
****^Fried white radish cake (or «turnip patties») is flavourful with ample white radish chunks. It’s fried up well with crispy edges.
****Deep fried taro & pork dumpling is tasty with the right amount of soft mashed taro. Good crispy texture.
***^Braised chicken feet are quite soft & tender. Flavours are absorbed well into the chicken skin.
***^Bean curd roll tastes pretty good, but isn’t well constructed. They were falling apart. They’re accompanied by a flavourful sauce.
OKAY:
***Rice bowl with spare ribs & chicken foot is mixed. Ribs (5 pieces) were flavourful & cooked the right amount. Braised chicken foot (1 piece) was undercooked. Rice was normal. This is a pretty good dim sum to get if everyone needs a bit of rice & complex carbs to feel full.
***Steamed shrimp dumpling (har gow) is not bad but not great. On the plus side, the dumpling was stuffed with ample chunks of shrimp and tastes good. However, the dumpling skin was too thick and chewy, not delicate as it’s supposed to be.
**^Rice roll with tofu is just okay.
NOT SO GOOD:
*^Shanghai dumpling (xiao long bao) is not very good. These dumplings did not come to our table hot. They should be served hot with juices trapped inside the dumpling. These dumplings were not juicy. The filling was solid and dense instead of tender and juicy. Dumpling skin was chewy.
^Rice roll with fried dough stick is not good. Dough stick was undercooked and doughy instead of being crispy. This is rather pointless since the whole point of having this dish & putting a dough stick inside the rice roll is to get the crispy texture to contrast with the soft texture of the rice roll. No flavour. I’d avoid this one.
^Taro cake is not good. Tastes like taro, but it was comprised of dry pieces of latticed taro. I’d avoid.
SUMMARY:
Food is not bad in general, and pretty good for the price. Each Small, Medium and Large dish is $ 2.68. Cash only for dim sum lunch. Cover charge was $ 1.20 per person.
PS. I used ^ to indicate a half-​star and * for a full star. So, ***^ means 3.5 stars.

I happened to pass by this small business strip mall. Since I didn’t have anything to eat and it was perfect timing for Dim Sum, I decided to drop in on a whim.
What a wonderful surprise to find a dim sum house /​restaurant in this otherwise secluded area.
The opulant décor is what I grew up with in the Chinatown of Montréal. Like a faux fancy palace with waiters in their pretend fancy waiter outfits. You know the kind that converts from dim sum, to dinner, to banquet in a flash?
Well the food was excellent as I ordered a few dim sum standards (har gow, siu mei, and sticky rice in lotus leaf) to test out and I was not disappointed.
Will definately come here again albeit a little off the beaten path, next time with friends.

Peking Duck for $ 20!??
I have been to Emperor Fine a couple of times for this outrageous special they offer on Monday nights (Peking Duck 2 courses for $ 19.88 — CASH only). The place itself is one of those fancy looking banquet halls complete with curtains at the window and an elevated room in the back. The sole purpose of coming was for the Peking Duck.
Besides the Peking Duck, we also ordered the Chicken with Jellyfish to wet our appetite a bit. That dish was not very good. The jellyfish didn’t look nor taste very fresh. The shredded chicken was not much better and it was just drowning in a little pool of chili oil. There wasn’t much sesame taste to it either which is what I typically love about these jellyfish dishes.
The Peking Duck is much better and the real reason you’re probably reading this review. The Duck is brought out to you on a cart with the steamed pancakes, cucumbers and carrots, and hoisin sauce. The duck is then carved in front of you as is ritual for these Peking duck restaurants. The skin was very crisp albeit a bit oily. The woman did a wonderful job of slicing chunks out of that duck so that we were able to have nice peking duck pancakes. Taste was wonderful and plenty of the duck for 3 people.
The second course is sauteed minced duck served with lettuce wraps. The lettuce wraps were nicely shaped to hold all that minced ducky goodness. The minced duck is sauteed with veggies like carrots, celery, etc. I love lettuce wraps because they’re so crisp and refreshing and pair along well with the oily goodness that is duck.
Come for the cheap Peking Duck, but it honestly was merely decent and nothing spectacular. I actually felt as though the food quality went down the past couple of times but its tough to do business here I guess.

OK, I really, really have to wonder: what is it about Asian restaurant owners that make them suddenly lose all ability to make an old-​fashioned Chinese restaurant actually look semi-​decent once they cross over the Pacific Ocean?
Seriously. I’ve been to quite a bit of dim sum places in Asia, and even the long-​established ones always seem to be able to make their establishments look nice and quite modern. But this restaurant, along with tons others like it, look like how a dim sum restaurant would probably look like in Hong Kong (or Singapore, Indonesia, I can go on) THIRTY YEARS AGO! We were contemplating of hosting our wedding dinner here, but after seeing THEM PINK CURTAINS, we were like OK how about NO.
Outdated look and outstandingly disappointing interior decoration aside though, this place does have very decent dim sum. They’re $ 2.70 for each portion on weekends before 11:30 am, and $ 2.90 afterwards. This is a pretty good deal and we came in to try it a few days ago with a few friends.
Reservation-​making (always a primal source of fear for this non-​Cantonese speaking reviewer) was a breeze, and when we came we were seated quite efficiently by a relatively friendly host. The servers came to check what tea we wanted a few times, and overall were pretty engaged throughout. Very decent service, and definitely a plus point.
When the food came, it can be summed up as «decent, but not great». The beef cheong fan was very tasty and tender, and the shao mai was certainly one of the better ones I’ve had recently. But the har gow had overly thick and crumbly shells, though the shrimps themselves were massive. The turnip cake was also a bit bland, and most of the other offerings were so-​so at best. Still, there’s nothing really wrong with any of them, and while we won’t necessarily be going back here anytime soon, this is more due to the fact that there are tons of other available options out there, rather than due to the fact that we didn’t like the place.
…still can’t get over the fact that this place was recently RENOVATED though. Are you telling me that before the renovation they looked even more outdated? Or did the owners just decided to go back in time to how HK restaurants looked when they were growing up? Utterly puzzling.

This is my regular dim sum place. They recently got a new owner and renovated a little. They are current having a promo for dim sum S/​M/​L all cost $ 2.70. They also changed the menu a bit but all the basic dim sum items are still there.
The food quality is always good when you go and the service is fast and attentive.

I been to Emperor Fine Chinese Cuisine a couple of time for their dim sum special, for $ 2.70 includes S/​M/​L sizes are quite reasonable, The quality is decent and the ingredients are fresh. Highly recommended if you can make a trip at their special time!
For dinner they also have a different special everyday! We ended up going on a Sunday which they have double lobster for $ 16.88 which is not even advertised on their website. We ended up ordering:
Peking Duck 2 Ways ($ 39.88)
— The skin so crispy and the freshly made crepes wrapping has this great chewy bite which I enjoy!
— The 2^nd course has all the duck meat chopped up in small cubes and stir fried with carrots and celery has this great smokey taste. And the lettuce fresh and handpicked to have this round shape, great attention to details in the kitchen!
Double Lobster Special ($ 16.88)
— I secretly ate most of it, aside from the head. yes it is that good!
— luckily the waiter came and change all our dishes mid meal if not my shell would be stacking sky high!
King Mushroom with Baby Snow pea Leaf ($ 18.88)
— Healthy option with just a touch of salt… great to balance out other dishes
Beef with Mushroom ($ 18.88)
— The dish I enjoy the least this evening, but my table mate seems to love the savoury taste and the chunk of meat! So still great choice!
Complimentary Dessert: Red Bean Soup with Sesame Pastry and Coconut pudding. And if you really don’t enjoy Red Bean Soup (yes soup for dessert?!!), if you ask nicely you might get Mango Pudding moulded into 2 fishes arranged into Classic Taoist taijitu of ‘fish-​like’ shape
Personally I like them both? Can I just have both?!
Services here can be hit and miss. Some staffs are really friendly, some staffs may try to force the more expensive «specials» on you and get annoyed if tell them no…
I would definitely be back for more dim sum and other daily dinner specials… and order what I enjoy and not what I being hard sell to.
Make sure to print out the 10% off dinner coupon on their website and in order to take advantages of discount and special, bring some cool hard cash!

Back in the olden days, Chinese emperors had eunuchs test out their food for poisoning before every meal. I’ll leave the food poisoning up to the eunuchs and just come to sample some of the food that Emperor has to offer.
As with most restaurants in the «Rich”-mond Hill area, the ambiance at Emperor is a little nicer, the service is a little better — but what about the food?
My uncle has seemed to embrace a new found love with Emperor, and we’ve dined here a few times. The service here is better than your average Chinese restaurant, but that is also reflected in the price of your meal. There are wet towels at your disposal to clean your hands prior to eating, and they do change your dishes once throughout the evening. Your first tea serving is also poured for you, but after that you’ll need to search for a eunuch if you don’t want to lift a finger?
The food here is pretty average. The portion sizes however, are smaller than most. We ordered a set dinner and a few extras.
The Seafood and Tofu Soup was pretty mediocre. It was a very thick soup that was a tad on the salty side.
The most memorable dish for me was the Peking Duck (which we got 2 ways, e.g. also with the Lettuce Wraps). The skin was nice and crisp, and there was a healthy ratio of fat to meat. The pancakes were also quite fresh. However, in the second course with the lettuce wraps the duck was oily, oily, oily!
The Crab Claws (e.g. deep-​fried crab) were quite good as well. The batter was not too oily and the crab meat was quite tender. However, I was missing the usual red vinegar that I love to plunge my crab claws into. Instead, it was substituted here with some sort of sweet and spicy chili sauce which was actually a nice departure from my usual.
The Yeung Chow Fried Rice (made with barbecued pork and shrimp) for me was a little bland, and they put in full shrimps. I think a diced shrimp would incorporate better with the other small, diced ingredients of the dish. The shrimps stuck out like a sore thumb.
For dessert, in addition to the usual Red Bean Soup, you will also get a plate of heart-​shaped mango jello and almond cookies. My word of advice? Avoid the red bean soup and go for the jello and almond cookies. The red bean soup was bland and watery.
Verdict:
This is a place that your would-​be husband would take your parents to to ask for your hand in marriage; or a place you’d take your in-​laws to for a nice dinner. In essence, if you want good Chinese food you can probably find better elsewhere if you’re not looking to impress the invited party.
You may also want to call in advance to make sure there isn’t a planned function with the usual karaōke set-​up. We were unfortunate and ended up dining here on the same night of a private function; and to perpetuate stereotypes there was a karaōke machine present. We cringed every 5 minutes when a new singer came on. Some may find opera offensive, but compared to some of the stuff I heard here tonight (e.g. a woman’s mourning sobs for the loss of her child, or a terrorized cat) I’ll take Puccini any day!