Empire Garden Restaurant — Restaurant in Boston

I've been coming to this place since I was a little kid. I can definitely say that Saturday's here were a part of my childhood. Every time I walk in through the door I'm amazed by the decor and the grandeur. The atmosphere is definitely one of elegance. As I understand it this place was once an opera house (thought I am not completely sure about that). The ceiling are so beautiful. Regarding the food here, I definitely think that it was better back in the day. But even so, I don't think that the quality is bad. I think that being such a large restaurant they have very good quality food and very delicious dishes. This place can accommodate a huge party and I know they also do weddings too. They also have a separate function room if you want some privacy so it's a really good place to have any large family events. For large events, they have set menus so the prices are very fair and very transparent. I really like that they have very traditional Chinese food and also more Americanized Chinese food. This way they can cater to people who are more used to traditional food and to more American crowds. One thing to keep in mind is that parking around here can be a little difficult. This place is located in the middle of Chinatown so on Friday nights and Saturday nights it can get really hectic. You can park in parking structure that is affiliated with the restaurant that way you can get a vulture so you can get a discount on parking. However, there is is a time limit of 3 hours so the voucher is only good for that time. The staff here are awesome. Many of them also speak English so it would be easy for non-chinese speakers to come here. They also make great great recommendations for foods. So if you're not sure which order you can ask one of them and they can help you. On Saturdays and Sundays they have dim sum in the morning. I think they might also have Dim Sum on the weekdays in the morning as well but I'm not sure. I haven't been to the dim sum in a couple of years but I do remember really enjoying it. I definitely recommend this place so...

The food itself is decent and some items were really good, though you certainly could get better dim sum elsewhere in Chinatown. However, this restaurant is super suspicious and provides poor service.

Price per item is high, and the prices are listed nowhere inside the restaurant that we saw and the itemized receipt showed every single item was charged higher than the website said. I'd love to show our receipt, but our server chased us down as we left to take back the itemized receipt and the customer copy was not itemized, just showing the total. Speaking of, instead of receiving a check then paying, I only ever received a check with the total after I paid.

On the website, the medium dim sum is listed at $4.15 to $4.65 per order; we were charged $6.50 per order we had. The Large dim sum is not listed on the site; we were charged $7.25 per order. The Kung Pao chicken listed at $16.45 was charged as $18.99. The tea is listed as a complimentary inclusion; we were charged $6 for one small pot. We certainly would not have drank the tea if we knew it was an extra charge instead of complimentary, which it is advertised as.

These overcharges took what was supposed to be a $45-50 ticket into over $70 pre tip!

As for the service, the ingredients are poorly communicated to the customer. We asked for an order of pork dim sum and asked specifically for one without shrimp, but received a order of pork and shrimp dim sum. My wife is allergic to shrimp and had to drink a large serving of water to breathe freely after consuming one dumpling.

All in all, even if the food was the best I ever had, I'd stay away due to the shady practices and...

Good dim sum and slow service at times. The best servers are the young lady with the shoulder length hair and the young tall man with the glasses. When I have one of them as a server, the service is a 5+. When I don't have them as servers, service can be slow.

This is the prettiest dim sum restaurant I have visited and I've seen hundreds. Empire Garden is set in an old theater.

Excellent ambience. Great drinks selection. The Mai Tai is fantastic. Limited dessert selection.

In April 2022, one of the cart ladies, the one with stamp number 4, charged twice for a dish. I don't think it was intentional -- she punched on a different line and then stamped again, had a weird look on her face, then walked away. Clearly, though, she knew she made a mistake and instead of correcting it, she obviously hoped I didn't notice. However, due to the look on her face, I looked at the tab and saw 6 stamps, but I had only 5 dishes. Thankfully, none of the plates had been cleared from the table (this non-clearing of the table is usually a negative, but it helped my case in this situation), so I got a hold of a server immediately and showed him 6 stamps punched for 5 dishes on the table. The server corrected tab.

There was one time when I paid for the tab and then I got stopped by Management, asking me if I had paid. I showed them my credit card receipt and I said I even gave them a great tip of over 20%.

I've eaten at Empire Garden over a hundred times. I would rate them a 5-star restaurant for most of the times I've been here.

June 10, 2022: I've changed the rating from a four to a five, but I've left the...