Empress Harbor Seafood Restaurant

I’m visiting from out of town with my girlfriend, another couple (both male) and their kids. The couple are Chinese, and one of them suggested that we check this place out. We love dim sum so we were excited to give it a shot.
We eat dim sum frequently back home, and we were really disappointed that there was a charge for tea ($ 1.20 per person) and that we never saw a dumpling cart once. What we did get was good, but it seemed service slacked off near the end. We waited an extra half hour in hopes of having a dumpling cart come by but we never saw it. My girlfriend and I were the only two non-​Chinese people in the place (she’s Thai and I’m white) so it was clearly about our ethnicity. How could they stiff us like that? When we left the hostesses just stared at us and didn’t even say thank you. Just because of our skin color? UNFAIR. NEVER COMING BACK.

This is my favorite restaurant for Dim Sum! I was born down the street in Monterey Park and raised near by in East LA. My parents always took us out of normal Mexican meals, I’m so glad they did. I grew up loving this delicious Chinese fast food and got the opportunity to learn about it’s history while studying at Le Cordon Bleu.
Empress Harbor Seafood Restaurant is my to go place when it comes to Dim Sum. Not only because it’s close by but it also having a great diligent staff, and beautiful décor. The rest of the building is pretty abandoned and outdated, but once inside the restaurant, you are transcended. I can’t think of another restaurant I would rather go to. I highly recommend it to everyone!

Really reasonable prices for dim sum. They also have a really cheap shrimp wonton noodle special for dine-​in customers. Highly recommended.

We tried here but find very strong MSG in the soup, never back again. Other dishes seem fine

On 20Dec2015, we had another wonderful private holiday dinner at Empress Harbor Seafood in Monterey Park. When I’m invited to a dinner party here, I always RSVP yes, b/​c I love their food & attention to detail. The staff is always very attentive & pleasant even with a large group. It’s also a great place for lunch or a evening out with a few friends.

The Service: Super attentive. They are very accommodating. Excellent customer service! There are a few private rooms as well.
The Food: We ordered the banquet menu for 10 people. Food is served very quickly. Fresh ingredient and large portion. My favorite has to be the lobster noodle. Big pieces of lobster and the noodle is very flavorful. Also, the roasted duck with Chinese buns. The duck skin is so crispy and the buns are fresh!
The Parking: Plaza parking lot and underground parking (free)/

My father in law lives in hong Kong and China and every time he comes back here, he always wants to go to Empress Harbor. Typically in the course of 2 weeks time, we would go here about 3 – 4 meals. So, that should say something about the taste of the food!
I appreciate that they give you lots of freebies, like salted peanut for appetizers, lotus root soup, and finally the dessert, either mango pudding or sweet red bean soup.
Our favorites to get here are the salt and pepper fried pork chop, fried chicken wings, egg and bittermelon dish, and sweet soy sauce pork belly.
The only thing that I wish was different here was that I wish I spoke Chinese, but I don’t so it’s a little hard to communicate. But typically they will definitely try to understand and will try to help as much as they can.
All in all, pretty good restaurant and would recommend it!

Not enough push carts. Only carry the very basis dim sums and mark most items B & C’s. Flavorwise either bland, too starchy or oily. How do you have braised tripe without the pork blood? The steamed turnip cake was not pan-​fried to order. The only item worth eating is the steamed lo mai gai (Lotus wrapped chicken sticky rice).

Great place for dim sum! My uncle and his family visited from Australia, so we took them here for lunch at 11am on a Sunday, when the long lines haven’t formed yet. It definitely got busier every minute though when servers and carts would come less and less often. I enjoyed their chicken feet, duck egg and pork porridge fried turnip cake, beef rice noodles, char siu bao, beef balls, and fried dough the most.

3 stars for good dim sum + 1 star for seating immediately for a group of 5 of us on a holiday weekend when other places had a 30 – 40 min wait! The only thing I’d knock Empress for is the lack of carts. We saw more at NBC even though we were tucked away in a private room which had the risk of being ignored!
We ordered the shrimp dumplings, shrimp cheng fun, egg custard tarts, beef tendon (1^st order was great, the 2^nd was a bit chewy), black bean pork ribs, turnip cakes, congee, pig’s feet in vinegar. We’d probably come again.

This used to be my go-​to Dim Sum spot with my parents and brother. We’d come here every so often to grab some delicious plump dumplings and used to wait a long time to get seated… All the while we always felt it was worth it. Fast forward to present moment, and I went here with my dad, my tastesbuds excited to reminisce but it’s all gone.
It took us 20 mins to get a cart to roll by. Firstly they favor the Chinese and it’s BLATANTLY obvious. Their food has lost it’s charm and flavors. I will say I did love their tendon a lot but everything else was unsettling and I was so disappointed. $ 40 for two people and we felt jipped by our experience.
Tripe was too salty, har gow took three carts, shiu mai was way too spongey. Lukewarm congee… this place is not what it used to be. And MAYBE it’s cause they serve less people so everything can’t be fresh but dang… I miss the glory days.
Terrible service but I think we expect that at a Chinese restaurant.

Came here for dimsum the other day with my bf’s parents. Being that my family is from Hong Kong, I know a lot about dim sum and have tried a number of places in norcal, socal, and hk.
FOOD:
I’ve had better. There wasn’t enough variety and also not enough carts being pushed around. We ordered some of the usual, popular dishes but I was not impressed by the chicken feet or the siu mai. Taste just wasn’t there.
Overall: ²⁄₅
SERVICE:
It was hard to flag someone down for anything. Also seemed a bit disorderly like workers not knowing what to do. One waiter told us the price of the wonton noodles is $ 2.99 while another waiter told us it is $ 3.50. Which is it?
Overall: ²⁄₅
DECOR/​AMBIANCE:
Your typical Chinese restaurant. Loud and noisy. Pretty clean for the most part although as usual, tables are pretty close together so you have to watch how you position your chair.
Overall: ³⁄₅
Probably doesn’t help that this plaza is rundown and many of the stores are closed. One of the elevators doesn’t even let you go down to the lower garage level B. How annoying.

I had been to this dim sum place before, and couldn’t put my finger on it until my friend started playing 20 questions, and the right name triggered the memory. Unfortunately, that name triggered some of my past, and nothing about this place, so I was going in blindfolded.
My party got here a little before 11, and needless to say, it wasn’t as placed as one would think, especially on a Saturday. For me, if a place isn’t packed during a prime time, especially a dim sum place, that’s a red flag, either that it’s a little too expensive and not worth the price, or the food isn’t that great, sometimes both. In this case, it’s actually both.
We were seated in an awkward area, literally in front of the server’s prep area, where all the servers go and retrieve anything a table needs, like condiments, more tea and extra tableware. And with that said, an awkward place put us at a disadvantage of having the carts go by us, either ignoring us because other tables were demanding the cart ladies’ attention or missing us completely for no reason. Even when we had little food at our table, no one was pushing us to get more food, which is kind of bad sign that the cart ladies’ really don’t care whether or not you get food.
We got the usual standard dishes at any dim sum place, but nothing really stood out from the wave of other places around Monterey Park. Nothing original, nothing «I have to Unilocal this dish and EVERYONE has to eat this», just a normal dim sum place with prices that are kind of on the higher end. (I didn’t noticed this until I was coughing on the side and noticed the table sign I had placed on the food. A basic dish started at to $ 2.50, and all the premium dishes were at most $ 7.00).
Parking isn’t too bad at this run down plaza, and getting to the actual restaurant isn’t too hard of a task, as it was the only place opened at this time. However, leaving the place was a bit of a fight, as hawk-​eye drivers were eyeing our parking spot.
And I just realized that they did not serve any of the turnip and lotus root cakes that I love to crunch on. WTH?!

Really disappointing dim sum experience. I don’t make the trek to SGV very often but my mom was in town and I wanted to take her to good dim sum and to try somewhere new since most places I’ve tried in SGV have been good but not amazing. She has a preference for push carts (not after this experience!) so I turned to Unilocal/​food bloggers to find a place.
1. The only thing going for this place was that there was no wait at peak times, and there was ample parking. This should probably have been our first clue.
2. The standards were average or below average. Nothing was very freshly made and nothing was particularly good. It was a little later in the day but still peak lunch time (before 1pm) so this is pretty unacceptable.
3. Selection/​Service was bad. The same push carts with the same handful of items came by, so finally we asked them to bring a few fairly standard dim sum items. It took forever to flag them down and they never brought what we asked for, or maybe they didn’t have them. I had my mom ask, so no language barriers either.
4. Prices were higher than many competitors (who have better quality and selection). While dim sum is still fairly cheap, the fact that they cost more than competitors with lower quality makes it unclear why anyone would prefer this.
Basically this was the most meh dim sum I’ve had at a proper dim sum restaurant. My mom even laughed and said that the dim sum place in Florida they go to is better, which is a very embarrassing comparison. Maybe we ordered wrong but if the standards are not made well it doesn’t encourage me to try more.

I was craving dim sum and my sister was craving Peking Duck, so we decided to come here for brunch. I’ve been to this restaurant over ten years ago and thought the food was decent. When we arrived, there weren’t many patrons. That should have been a red flag but we stayed.
Most of the dim sums were ok. The har gow didn’t even come out til much later. I was so in love with the XO sauce at Kirin, that I ordered extra. It was horrible, a pale comparison to the one I had in Kirin and I had to pay for it. It tasted like it came out of a bottle. No flavor and dried!
We also ordered:
— XO fried rice ovalettes, which was everyone’s favorite.
–Walnut Shrimp — -it wasn’t good. I can’t believe I’ve had bad walnut shrimp back-​to-​back
–Peking Duck – tasty meat, fluffy steam buns, but the sauce was too salty! They sell the sauce in a bottle. I don’t understand how they can go wrong with it.

Dim Sum is tricky business! You need to go early enough to not have to wait but late enough where they are bringing out all the dishes! We made a few Dim Sum mistakes today!
1) We arrived at 10:30 am (they opened at 10am), as we left we passed so much amazingness leaving the kitchen. I think 11am is the sweet spot!
2) We chose all the standards — Cha Sui Bao, Shumai, Har Gow, Chinese Broccoli. They were good but we were full by the time some interesting items came out!
The good news is we did try a few and they were all winners! Chicken Bao with a sweet crunchy top, Chinese donut wrapped in noodle, hot almond soup topped with a puff pastry so interesting and good.
Next time we must try this amazing looking Soft Noodle! We also missed spicy fried tofu, fried rice, pork ribs, stuffed tofu!
Please note this review is based on the flavors along. Anyone who knows does not expect good service. Basically it’s the Wild West waving to flag down anyone to help/​bring food. Also trying to figure out what you are eating can be a challenge (most of the servers spoke very little English). I say go with the adventure and if it looks good take it! All this is always worth it if the food is good… and it is here!

I came back here recently with some friends who are from the area… and boy, have I kinda changed my mind about this place!
Some of the bakery items still «look» a little «off», but they sure taste good! I personally love the steamed stuff here the best. They have a GREAT selection of dim sum items — everything from pork shu mai to wonton noodle soup to ground beef balls to fish cakes. A lot of people love this giant fried donut thingy from here, which comes drizzled with honey. I personally think it’s just okay. Way too sweet for my liking!
The pricing is generally still better than dim sum restaurants in Rowland Heights. Maybe it’s just because there’s more restaurants in the Monterey Park area, but it seems like they try harder to keep their pricing down to stay competitive! ;)

Came here for a Chinese New Years banquet.
Best parking is in the underground lot. Service was good.
Food was ok. Nothing special.
Crab soup was pretty good, had a lot of crab lumps inside it. Duck Baos were also good. You get a ton of duck in the dish. The baos were not bao shaped though, they were pancake shaped which made it harder to eat.

I LUV ME SUM DIM SUM…
I don’t know about you but it’s a freakin struggle finding a GOOOOOD dim sum place. Is it not!!!
I definitely like the cart-​style dim sum places just because I feel like I like the visual aspect where you can pick and choose which looks fresh/​yummy! However, I always get super antsy because you just don’t know how long the food has been on the cart for… Right? Ugh. So annoying!
This place wasn’t too bad. It seemed pretty clean for the most part. The tea was piping hot which is always nice to wash down the greasy dim sum. My favorite dim sum has to be the Chinese spinach dish with garlic and the fried mochi ball with beef inside!
One annoying thing about this place was we ordered the Chinese spinach dish separately because they didn’t have it in the carts and it took SO long to come out. So by the time we demolished the dim sum, we were so full to eat the spinach. Sigh.
Overall, not bad… If you guys know any good dim
sum places… Hit your girl up!!! TY GUYS

I’ve had better dimsum on the westside. It’s kind of a pain for me to drive east to have dimsum so perhaps I have a higher standard? In any case, we ordered a bunch of the staples: tripe, shumai, turnip cake, ribs, crystal shrimp dumplings, rice and pork in lotus leaf, assortment of other dumplings and pastries. We even got the soy tofu in gingered sugar water dessert. Overall pretty average. I thought the shumai was pretty good but nothing else really stood out.
Ample parking in private lot. It wasn’t super full even at 10:45am on a Saturday. Go up to the second floor right in front of the escalators. The service people don’t really speak mandarin. Cantonese helps.