Imperial Soup — Restaurant in Oakland

First, even though it feels like a hole in the wall, the service is top notch, warm and friendly. That is rare in this type of establishment and deserves a shout out. I consider this a hidden Oakland Chinatown gem.

Second, their food is authentic Chinese and some of it is hard to find. The main attraction is the double-boiled soup (燉湯). Ours was bone and heart-warming. We had the abalone soup (#1) and the black silkie chicken soup (#6). These soups are considered to be extremely nourishing soups - there are ones designated for high blood pressure etc. It's also the kind of soup that pregnant women are told to drink. I come here for soup after surgery.

We ordered the set menu for two, which included two soups of your choice, half a steamed chicken, a whole steamed fish, a plate of green steamed vegetable, and two bowls of rice.

My 83 year old Taiwanese mom kept saying she couldn't finish her soup because of all the other dishes. But finish every drop she did, and she clearly loved hers!

Their set menu is a bona fide DEAL (quality, quantity, and value). We stuffed ourselves so we had to waddle out to our car. Before I could pull out of the parking spot, mom demanded that I bring her back again this weekend before she leaves.

We devoured the steam fish so fast that we forgot to take a photo. Not one morsel was left. The steamed chicken was moist and flavorful; the ginger/scallion sauce was great. The vegetable was cooked just right. Their chef is amazing.

The steam rice with eel wrapped in lotus leaves is next on my list for my next visit. We almost hijacked another table's order of it. They serve dim sum all day - what?! Yay.

Please don't come. We want to keep getting seated...

I have been to imperial soup a few times, both through dining in and as to-go pick up. Initially I was amazed by the quality of the soup and the okay decent ingredients that they use. That said, I overall think they are well deserved a 3 star (or maybe a 3.5 stars review) due to the overall 6 out of 10 quality of dishes. For example, the curry chicken rice was too bland. The curry sauce was plain ordinary. They put extra chili oil to try to cover up the lack of aroma but turned out it just made the rice plate hot for no reason. Just hot, but not spicy in a flavorful way. Hainan chicken is alright but no surprise. Yellow eel rice is alright but again no surprise. Laap mei rice is on the fatty side but again no surprise. Overall, for a combo of $16-17 including a main dish with a soup, it’s slightly higher than expected. I think main dish should be a $10 quality thingy and soup about $4-5 quality thingy. So combo should be $14-15. If combo is lowered by $2, it will be a 4 star review given the increased...

My lunch was excellent!

I had Set meal B with mushroom and chicken. The special thing is that the whole dish, rice and all, is streamed and served on top of a lotus leaf. This gives it a very unique earthly fragrance. The meat was boneless and tender. Let me put it this way, it's 200% better than Costco chicken. In addition to the regular Chinese mushroom, there was also the soft wood ear fungus in the dish. The slightly crunchy texture gave the dish some very nice variety. And of course, this eatery emphasizes healthy food, so there was also veggies.

For the soup, I picked the one made with silkie chicken. Silkie chicken has black color skin and bones. The herb part of the soup is good for keeping hair dark, which I need, and keeping one youthful, which I also need. I think this is the only place I know that serves this traditional soup. It was very good too. The waitress also mentioned that I could have chosen any one of the other $4.99 soup to go...