imperial garden

excellent!. excellent food and excellent restaurant. in particular, the traditional shanghainese pork and the newly-developed seafood basket are awesome!! the pork just melted in my mouth and is not greasy. the seafood basket, because newly developed, is not on the menu yet (so you should ask!) with the original recipe from a top restaurant in hong kong. overall, five star *****

one of the nicest dim sum restaurants i've been. nice atmosphere. clean bathrooms. great selection. nice bamboo serving boxes. all around great experience.

user reviews. we have eaten dim sum here for over ten years. by far the best times are sat and sun, from 11am-2pm.
the restaurant usually is full at these times, so there is a wait. many offerings, all excellent and fresh. very little english spoken, but gestures work just fine.
from reading the other reviews , i suspect off times when the place is not busy, might not be the best. we have always been courteously treated. we will keep going back.

we discovered this restaurant & the great wall mall back in 2009 when we came to the area for a conference. i was dreaming about it when we confirmed this trip! wish we had all day dimsum in chicago!

i was literally the only person in the resturaunt and the waiter never refilled my drink and just sat in the corner texting away. he went to the back and i finished eating while he was gone, so i walked up front to pay and it took another 10min for him to come back out front. will never eat here again.

my favorite dim sum place was closed for vacation, so i thought i would try this place again with reservations from prior visits. the only thing good i have to say is that we were seated quickly because the place was only half full. food was average at best. some of it was cold and selection was very limited. service was awful. the cart came around once and only once. no one asked how things were until we complained about the crappy service and pointed out that the two servers were too busy standing by the front door with the carts talking then doing their job. i have never stiffed anyone on a tip before but this place earned it. never again will i go there, even if someone else is paying.

dim sum. on sunday, 10/7/12 a large group (two tables) went to imperial garden seafood. some of us had been here before, but many years ago. we had the best time. a large and delicious variety of dim sum, delivered regularly, attentive service at the table, forks, water, tea, cocktails. we asked for some special treatment with the tab regarding drinks, not a problem, bar staff went out of their way to accommodate us. altogether a very positive experience. definitely recommend reservations, the line waiting to get in went out the door and down the sidewalk.

.........i've had better!. i was in seattle for a birthday party from vancouver, bc over the labor day weekend. i took my cousin and his family to imperial garden seafood restaurant for dinner. this is not our first time there. we've been there for dim sum and dinner in the past. the food has always been very good!

we ordered our favorite dishes from the menu..........not going to list all the dishes but will only provide comments on the problem dishes. honey garlic spareribs was served warm. i guess it sat in the back before it was served to us. the quality of the dish was mediocre.

beef tenderloin in orange sauce was not edible. the orange sauce was extremely sweet making the dish taste more like a dessert. the beef tenderloin had the consistency of shoe leather. i've don't remember ever eating beef tenderloin this tough before. perhaps a little tenderizer would've help if they chose to serve a cheap cut of beef! the pieces of beef were very inconsistent - sugar cube size to 2" x 3" slices. the thicknesses were are very inconsistent, anywhere was stir fry thickness to 1/2" thick.

peking duck..........hmm, not sure where to start! the peking duck dish is $30 - served as 2 dishes. the first dish consists of the crispy duck skin served with small individual bite size buns with green onions and hosin sauce. basically, you're just making a small (2 bite) sandwich with a piece of crispy skin, little bit of green onions with hosin sauce. the second dish is consists of just the duck meat with no skin. you can have it served in soup or lettuce wrap. we chose lettuce wrap.

where's the problem? the first dish of crispy duck skin consisted of a few small 1" by 1" size pieces of skin. the rest of the dish consisted of pieces of duck meat served like turkey breast for thanksgiving dinner... carved slices of breast meat with the skin attached on the edge. hmmm, where the heck did all the crispy duck skin go?? .............peking duck, i think they're trying to maximize by the way they serve it.

i'm not surprised if they're doing this to rip customers off. this is common practice is some chinese restaurants in vancouver serving king crab. you order a 20lb crab at $18 to $20 a pound. they only serve you 15lbs of what you paid for. the other 5lbs will be served to another customer. i hope you see the point.

the sizzling eggplant hot pot with fish slices. there is absolutely nothing sizzling about this dish. the ingredients were stir fried in a wok and served to us in a clay hot pot. the hot pot was not even hot! just warm to your touch!

i did not complain simply because i did not want to offend the chef.

during dinner, we asked for a bowl of white rice.....ice water....and a few spoon so my cousin can feed his 1 year old daughter. when we asked for the spoon, the waiter responded with the comment, is there any there anything else! the waiter seemed extremely agitated & frustrated with his tones.

at the end of our meal, the manager asked what we thought of our meal. my wife told him the beef tenderloin with orange sauce was not edible. he took a fork to feel the beef. he agreed it was very tough and the chef should've used a tenderizer to make the cut of beef more tender. he agreed with my wife's comments and removed the dish from the bill. i had no intent to leave a tip. since he removed the dish from the bill. i decided to add $10 as a tip, basically the cost of the dish.

imperial garden seafood sells itself as a higher quality chinese restaurant. the décor and prices support this. will i ever go back? heck no! there are many other lower quality restaurants in the seattle area which serve the same dishes at a lower cost at a higher quality!

we were there on saturday night. the restaurant was at 10% capacity. i guess i did not get the memo.

my review of imperial garden seafood is consistent with other yelpers!

please avoid. friends wanted to return to this horrible restaurant. i figured perhaps they had improved in the three years since i had been there last. waiter insulted me as we were seated, and continued to insult at each interaction. we were the only patrons. the staff was very loud, including constant cell phone ringing and answered just feet away from our table. the food was adequate, nothing special, and over priced. the table service was terrible, our waiter insisted on being rude at every opportunity.

if it were not for my friends i would never frequent this establishment. i love dim sum in the id, so much better in every way, quality, service, and price.

select your day. we have tried this place numerous times and have determined that for dimsum on a weekday lunch is not good because of the lack of assortment of foods offered. however, if you go on sunday from 10am on (just before the church-goers rush), the assortment is quite good and flavorful. still trying to figure out why they charge you for tea though. recommending for sunday after 10am only!

rude uncivilized service spoils the experience. rude, uncouth headwaiter spoil the experience.
if i can rate it with no stars at all, i would. we had paid and were still determining what tip to give when the head waiter snatched the black chargebook from infront of us. he flipped it open, saw that there was nothing in there and threw it back at our table. appalled by his behavior, we left a less than normal tip to show our disgust. the rest of my party had left after me when he came back, and flipped the chargebook open again. he took the bills from the chargebook, gave out a angry sigh, and threw it at my direction and stalked away.
i have never experienced such ungracious behavior in all of my life. you tip according to how satisfied you were at the service. you simply do not demand what is rightfully termed a gratuity.
i will never patronize this restaurant ever again. i wouldn't recommend this restaurant even to my worse enemy.
mr. headwaiter, you know who you are. at the lunch dimsum on sunday, august 8, you were wearing a striped blue shirt with a tie. i am not even certain how you became the headwaiter but i do suggest you take lessons in tact and civility. you spoiled my family's dining experience at your establishment, and you have certainly lost our business forever.
for all of you dimsum lovers in seattle, i would suggest going to jade garden or o'asian. you won't get treated like refuse there.

what was nancy leson thinking?. went for sunday dim sum recently, very disappointing, too much mystery meat, poor service and lousy dim sum selections and very dirty

very poor service. we went there for dim sum with friends around 11:30 a.m. it took awhile for the food to come around and when it got around to us we picked 5 to 6 dishes. about 10 to 15 minutes later another cart came around. if they do come around they seems to pass by our table.

we also ordered an item, which they ran out and it took them about 15 minutes to cook. i don't think they prepared food fast enough for the customers there. and the water, we asked for some - the waiter heard us, but never gave us water. we had to go up to the counter and grab a pitcher of water ourselves.

there weren't that many customers on that day. i believe there were about 35 to 40 people. overall, i don't mind the food, but the service is so bad i don't think i'll be going back anytime soon.

dead sea creatures. just had a lunch meeting here today, april 14, 2009, and we were all disappointed in the minimal dim sum offerings, poor service, fake and gummy hot pot and the wall of filthy tanks housing a variety of sea creatures, many of them dead or dying.

dim sum was nothing like the website pics indicated and was a fairly typical array. none of the items were 'bad' but few were impressive. most items were pork, deep fried or tofu based. we wondered where all the seafood was at the imperial garden seafood restaurant.

of the items that we did enjoy, the sumptuous and flavorful tendon and pork ribs that looked like chops topped the list. we also ordered a spicy seafood hotpot and they brought out a a medium sized bowl, like a pho bowl, with a tiny amount of actual seafood and mostly gummy rice noodles. sea meats were limited to fish, squid and a scallop. it was a noodle dish man, not a hot pot. no bubbly broth action, no fire, no true hot pot.

after 15 minutes i asked a young waiter to please flip over the up-side down and half dead king crab. the fish tanks were the cleanest but the crab and shrimp tanks had considerable turbidity and black gunk built up on the water intake pipes with grimy glass that was so dirty you couldn't see through it in some places. yeah, i want to eat some of that.

my co-worker watched them pull a large dead fish out of another tank before the rest of us got there. few shrimp were moving and several had obviously moved on to a better place. wtf are they thinking? don't brag about your live seafood then choose not to clean the tanks and keep the critters alive and kicking until their number comes up.

the place was respectfully full, maybe 1/2 for a tuesday lunch, but too many staff were standing around with thumbs in their butts instead of picking up our empty dim sum steamers, replacing plates piled with bones, providing fresh napkins or maybe cleaning the dirty tanks and removing all the rotting corpses. we noticed curious , large crocks going out to a large table of folks in a corner. we wanted to go sit with them since they were off menu and doing much better than we were.

on the way out we noticed that the king crab was on special for $18.99/lb.