Imperial China

This is my favourite Chinese restaurant in the area, and in my opinion, better than the Pilgrim House in Southampton for their food. But they are very popular and get very busy; be aware that if you haven’t booked, chances are, you won’t get a table at peak times and it’s probably better to avoid the 7−8pm slot on popular days too. Perhaps I should deduct stars because at popular days/​times I personally feel it’s best avoided, but if you choose the less popular time when they’re not running at capacity, I’d highly recommend it.

We headed off to Lyndhurst on a spur-​of-​the-​moment whim for an overnight stay at the weekend — hungry after a long walk in the beautiful New Forest, we took a gamble after looking at their menu as we passed by and made a reservation for that evening.
The restaurant was very busy when we walked in, a few minutes early: we were invited to take a seat while our table was made ready, which gave us a moment to look at the delicious Szechuan menu again. We were shown to a lovely table in the middle of the restaurant, up close to the wall so we didn’t have people brushing past continuously, bang on our reservation time!
We selected a random bottle of wine from the menu (an Italian rose) which was very nice. We elected to start with wan-​tun soup and grilled dumplings, which came out piping hot and absolutely delicious. The grilled dumplings were so moorish that we could happily have tucked into another plateful!
We chose crispy beef with sweet-​piquant sauce and panfried squid in blackbean sauce as our mains, accompanied by steamed rice and Yung Chow fried rice (containing meat and prawns). There was a nice lull in between our starters and main dishes being served which gave us time to enjoy our wine and savour the flavours from the starters more fully.
The main courses were exceptional — not only in terms of quality, but also quantity! Lovely tender strips of beef were served in a delicate sweet-​peppery sauce which was the perfect companion to the Yung Chow fried rice; my partner was very pleased with his panfried squid (again, plentiful quantity) and found the blackbean sauce quite fiery, although still very tasty and not offputting at all.
We found the service to be very swift and courteous — the only things we could possibly find fault with was (a) after the first pouring of wine we were left to do it ourselves (not that we minded!), (b) we left the restaurant without being bid farewell, and © critically — the smokers stood outside the front door of the restaurant and as it was a fairly warm evening, the door was left wide open and the smoke blew in constantly. Not nice if you are a non-​smoker!
The food was exceptional; I think this definitely comes into our top 3 Chinese restaurants in the UK. We will definitely return again to the Imperial China next time we are visiting the area — well worth a visit, in our opinion.

Our favorite Chinese we live in hedge end now but this is by far the best
is quite expensive but I think the quality speaks for its self.

We had a table booked here on Saturday evening, but never actually got to try the food. We entered the restaurant only to be totally ignored by the staff. At least four different staff members passed near us but didn’t even acknowledge us standing waiting at the door. We watched them fuss around a chinese family (several members of staff at once) but totally ignore us (British). Fed up, my partner approached a staff member to say that we had a table booked. He just looked at my partner as if to say, and?. There were seats by the entrance but we weren’t even invited to sit down to wait. So we left. A shame, but their customer service is non-​existant and the staff very arrogant.

We go to this restaurant frequently because the food is great and reasonably priced but mainly because the service is exceptional. It is situated in the main street of Lyndhurst opposite the road leading to Cadnam. It is a short walk from the public car park. They serve Chinese and Szechwan food. There is a vast choice on the menu, and the staff will help with selections. The service is quick and efficient I think that they have all been highly trained and it shows. They also do a take away menu which seems to be popular but we haven’t tried it yet.