Empress Seafood Restaurant

The first time I came here, I wasn’t overly impressed. My most recent visit changed my mind.
Dim sum service is a mix of the traditional carts and ordering off the menu. Plenty of delicious offerings will come around to your table, but if what you want hasn’t come around, the servers are more than happy to take an order and bring you specific dishes. Service comes around to refill water on a regular basis.
I am eager to come back to try their non dim sum food.

For various reasons, we’ve eaten here twice in the last two months. Between the two visits we ordered three kinds of soup, 2 main dishes, and 3 types of dim sum. Not one morsel of food was worth putting in your mouth. This was the worse Wor Wonton (here they call it the Special House soup) I’ve ever eaten. I’ve never tasted a broth so completely tasteless, and there was some icky fish in there as well. The dim sum was cold and horribly prepared. I took one bite of the leek dumplings and decided the rest could go in the garbage. The sliced pork was cold and actually hard (as opposed to hot, moist, and succulent). I could describe how horrible each dish was, but I hope you get the picture. We will NEVER go back. Panda Express is waaay better, and that is no compliment to either place.

This is our go-​to delivery place. We have ordered countless times, never disappointed. It took us a while to find a good Chinese delivery, but Empress is heads and shoulders above the other places we tried.
Also the delivery guy is a real sweetheart.

We should have went to PF Changs…
Worst sesame chicken I have ever had in my life!!!
My fiancé and I were driving around, decited to go to PF changs but instead went to test out a new place we could call our very own.
The waitress took forever to acknowledge we were ready to order when we clearly said we were ready. My fiancé ordered the hot and sour soup and I the egg drop soup. Not bad. We ate all of it. When we first received our orders, I was a little leery to try it. First impression large poofy chicken crisp pieces with dense dark dressing and few sesame seeds. I am a picky eater, now my fiancé will eat almost ANYTHING! I bit into the smallest piece… I couldn’t eat anymore, COMPLETE lack of appetite. I then requested that my fiancé try a piece. He could not finish. He spit into his napkin. The taste was bitter, almost as if they added citrus to sesame sauce and soy sauce or rotten taste of something and they called it a sesame chicken dish. It was discusting. I LOVE chinese, and despite being picky; I’ll eat all my food and just never go back if I’m not too impressed, but I didn’t even want the food to go. My fiancé ordered the sweet and sour chicken. VERY Little veggies, 5 small cubed pieces of diced bell peppers, and an additional couple pieces of onion. The sauce on the sweet and sour chicken was not bad at all but my fiancé could only eat one piece. The chicken tasted like it had been sitting under a heat lamp all day, chewy. He refused to take the rest home. The very few peppers tasted fresh. The rice tasted instant, NOT jasmine rice, which is generally served at actual chinese restaurants. Prices were typical for a dressed up restaurant. In the past 6 years of being we have tried lots of chinese restaurants, but never complained till now. If service was awful or food wasn’t to great we just stopped going; but this experience was THE WORST. No offered discount or anything only eating soup and drinking water and leaving ALL the food. We didn’t expect anything. We asked about maybe a discount even a dollar or 2 would have been ok. Not a big deal. Effort! Their Reason provided was «sesame, sweet & sour chicken are our most popular dishes.» We still provided an average tip. Paid $ 30 for everything. In hindsight, we should have went to PF changs.

We saw the sign changed about 10 months ago… And decided to give it w shot again as my previous experience was over 10 years ago when I first moved to Denver. Oh my! How times have changed, and management, and the chefs here. Great food, great dim sum! This is the best place for Dim Sum in my opinion these days. Fresh seafood, more dim sum selections than other places I’ve been near by. Food was no longer greasy, fresh tasting food, friendly service and wait staff. Turns out, they used to have many owners and had many different opinions about how food should be made and how the restaurant should be ran, now they just have one owner and has clear direction as how the restaurant should be. I love how spacious it is here and I never had to wait when I get there right at about 10:30 — 11. They also do dinner dim sum but you’ll have to order off of the dim sum menu.
Had the duck here and also a few stir fried rice noodle and rice dishes, they are all delicious! Empress has become my go-​to spot for dim sum!!! Awesome turn around guys! :)

I came to this place after I had been craving for dim sum for couple of months. The taste is OK level. We ordered the usual items but nothing stood out. The service was not really impressive. Not sure it was because we came early when work just started. We waited a lot trying to get eye contact with the staff but nobody seemed to pay attention to our needs.
I would wait quite a while before I come back again. For the foo. Not the service.

Overall, if you have a craving for dim sum late on a Thursday night (like we did) Empress works. No limited time offering for dim sum and they deliver! Those two points alone earn at least 3 stars. If I were to rate the dim sum itself, then it would be just below average. Pretty much all the dim sum we ordered had a faint flavor of sesame oil. The potstickers were good, but the outer «skin» was a little tough. And, finally the portions were on the small side.
Delivery was prompt and as scheduled on Eat24 so that was a definite plus. Delivery person was very friendly. Will have to try their regular menu items, so this review is really just about delivery service and dim sum.

This place is a win because it’s the only dim sum place that will deliver in my area. So on lazy (hungover) Sundays it hits the spot. Quality wise it’s not on the same level as Super Star or Star Kitchen but it’s not too far off. Not a huge fan of their chicken fried rice and the free wontons are almost always dry but hey, they’re free. The dim sum options are pretty good. I really like their potstickers too.

I came here for a wedding. The venue looked alright, nothing fancy. If the venue was cheap to rent out then I’d give it 4 stars. But the decorations were cheap; it looked like they used things from the dollar store (no bueno, unless you’re on a tight budget). The 8 course dinner tasted like any food at an Asian wedding. It was delicious! And the staff were pretty efficient. The waiter came around often to see if we needed anything, which was great; this is rare.
Parking was okay for me since I came early, but I think other guests had to park on the street to eat there.

Dim sum without having to wait forever in line? Gimme!
Although the service was very friendly, it’s not very efficient here. The server kept disappearing for long periods of time. I’m also not a fan of not being able to choose items from the carts. You write your choices on the sheet they give you (like when you order sushi), then as the carts carrying those items come around, they mark it off and drop off your food. This makes getting another round of the same thing a hassle. Also, if you want something from the regular menu, you may not get it because they don’t check the extra order box on the sheet and it can take forever to find your server. And sometimes the cart you need doesn’t come at all so you end up missing half of what you ordered. Eating dim sum is my favorite hobby. Don’t tease me by not bringing everything I ordered. It makes me sad.
As for the dim sum, I thought it was pretty good. The only one I don’t care for is the shrimp cheong fun. It had an off taste to it and looked like it was old. The rest was really good especially the scallop dumplings. If you’re looking for more noodly offerings, try the beef chow fun. The noodles are cooked perfectly and the sauce is delicious. They also do a decent spicy pepper shrimp.

I’ve lost count how many times I’ve been here and I live in NYC! It’s almost become a tradition that we come here for dim sum every time I come to Denver. This restaurant is very reasonably priced and service is always super fast. Everything is cooked to order and they have a wide variety. You can even get dim sum at dinner time!

We had dim sum. It was very mediocre. The food could have used more seasoning for sure.

I pretty much give up on the dim sim scene in Denver. I visit my family in San Fransisco. So it’s just really hard to go to a dim sum restaurant in Denver and expect the same. Empress is OK. It’s pretty authentic and the waiter is very courteous. I am sorry to give them 3 stars but I can’t lower my standard for dim sum. I took one star off due to their flavor and another star due to their lack of variety that usually separates dim sim from other cuisines. If you never had dim sum before, by all means give this place a try. Parking space is spacious and usually no waiting in line.

I was dealing with a hangover and I was craving Sunday afternoon Chinese food. I called empress and it was great.
We got sesame chicken which was excellent, Mongolian beef, and orange chicken. The orange chicken was very similar to the sesame chicken but still good. The crab cheese wontons were free with a $ 20 purchase which was awesome. It took a half hour and the delivery guy was friendly. I will order from them again.

A Little Background
You don’t have to be an internationally reknown chef to know that not all Chinese food comes from the same area. Just like all american food doesn’t come from Utah. Different areas represent different types of food. Empress for the most part is Shanghanese. Yet the dim sum is originally originated from Beijing. The food isn’t bad, but it definitely isn’t great. It lacks depth of flavor, creativity and frankly just straight up love.

Two decades ago they made their stance in both the vietnamese and chinese community in Denver by offering one of only two «real» places for asians to hold their asian style wedding receptions. Now that the «X «generation is grown up and moved onto newer, better and higher quality food and spaces, Empress is the old turtle that has been caught left behind in the dust.
Too slow for the times
It’s actually sad to see this place slowly go down the drain thru the decades. It’s almost like you need to pour some Draino on it to help it go down faster to ease the pain. The food is mediocre at best regardless if its the lunch dim sum or the wedding style dinner dishes. It can’t keep up with the changes times and competition in the area.
Old Timers Running the Show
Slow is smooth is fast… yet not always. They’ve tried to change their «image» in recent years with the removal of the horrible karaōke stage and addition of two TVs. That is their response to the changing times and that is what they call «remodeling».

Had an opportunity to meet internet friends, and we decided dim sum would be great. Our friends recommended Empress, given many of the restaurants in this area do daily dim sum. Given it wasn’t Saturday/​Sunday, the restaurant was not packed, though you also didn’t get to take advantage of seeing everything with the carts.
That said, we did have a menu list, and were salivating over the choices. Unfortunately, one of our friends is allergic to seafood, so our choices were limited (although we did get a couple seafood dim sum just for us).
Extremely tasty, nice sauces, and less pressure to get everything you wanted «now» versus a weekend.
Also, they had aquariums showing some of the available offerings. As I approached the restrooms, I saw two eel swimming — thought to myself — hmmm, you’d be fun to eat!

What differentiates Empress is their service and attention to customers. There is usually no wait on Saturdays and Sundays for brunch, and the staff is not only attentive and prompt, but very warm and friendly.
It has become our go to place for Dim Sum. The food has always been fresh and flavorful, and the service courteous compared to the «other» places.
Besides our usual dim sum, we will sometimes order the roast pork, with skin, off of the regular menu. Yum! They also hired new chefs and have expanded their menu so there are new and interesting things to try for adventurous souls.

This was the first place in Denver that I had dim sum, probably 12 – 15 years ago when it was quite the place to go. It was time to revisit this summer. It’s age is showing and the presentation of many traditional items a bit bland. It is a large space so it can accommodate many large parties as was evident from our visit. The staff members were very nice and got us items we requested that we did not see on the carts but the spark seems to be gone unfortunately.
There are just so many good dim sum choices in Denver and they are all crowded so it would be nice and probably successful too, if Empress could do a little update in appearances and food quality.

After more than 6 months of hard eats and many visits to several dim sum destinations of Denver (star kitchen, super star, Kings Land), I have finally concluded that Empress Seafood Restaurant would be my go to place on Federal St to fix my Dim Sum cravings.
Why?
— It is not overcrowded, therefore I don’t feel rushed to swallow my food and get out.
— The dim sum size is slightly smaller but priced right. When eating dim sum, the bigger is not always the better in my book. If you are like me, and like to shovel in multiple dim sum courses during each visit, then the dim sum size at ESR will serve you well.
— The dim sum quality although can’t always be compared to those served in Hong Kong or in the Bay Area, they are, at least, as enjoyable as those served at the other several more popular dim sum joints around Denver.

What place can hold hundreds of guests, have a family style dinner course, and accommodate live music for weddings?
The Empress Seafood Restaurant of course!
I have been here for a multitude of weddings throughout my life and each time they are consistent with the quality and quantity of the food. These people know big weddings like the back of their hand and certainly stand their ground as a go-​to restaurant for large parties.
The service is usually quick and efficient. I am always in love with their roasted quail and rice dishes. The seasoning is perfect every time, so huge compliments to the chef for such versatility.
Great space for entertainment during dinner as well, and I am happy to come back to Empress, for a wedding or just even a nice dinner.