Empire Restaurant — Restaurant in Oregon

This was honestly the worst meal I've ever had at a Chinese restaurant.

I ordered the Szechuan Beef dinner special, which came with an egg roll, fried rice, and wonton soup. I'll dissect it item by item, because there is a LOT to talk about here.

Szechuan Beef is simple... spicy beef stir-fried with various vegetables, not too hard, almost every Chinese restaurant does it well. I have no clue what the hell this was. What I got was an entire plate full of cooked carrot and celery strips in a very mild-flavored dark brown sauce with a few pieces of beef hiding way underneath somewhere. There was so much celery that it completely overwhelmed everything else flavor-wise in the dish. The beef and the sauce were bland, with no tang and NO spice whatsoever (despite being marked as "spicy" on the menu,) and not a single item in the dish had any signs of being seared or caramelized while being stir-fried. The whole thing was bland, the flavors did not mesh AT ALL, and frankly it just looked like no care/effort whatsoever was put into cooking it.

The beef was served with a large portion of "fried rice" (which I feel it's very generous to even call fried rice.) The rice was dry, chewy, and had absolutely NO vegetables or egg or meat in it at all, it was literally just an entire plate of rice stir-fried with soy sauce. There was multiple large unbroken clumps of white rice stuck in the middle which just adds to the overall feel of a complete lack of effort. The flavor was technically edible, but as bland as could possibly be imagined, and nothing like the colorful flavorful juicy fried rice you're expecting when you think of what fried rice should look/taste like.

The egg roll contained nothing but cabbage and a couple tiny pieces of meat, and flavor-wise was edible but low on seasoning and definitely not one of the better egg rolls that I've had. (Again, this is a theme here, every single dish in this restaurant seems to be "as few ingredients as we can possibly include in this, the cheapest least-effort version of this dish that we can possibly make.")

The wonton soup was acceptable, flavor-wise it was the only part of the meal that actually compared reasonably well to what I was expecting from a Chinese restaurant. But even then it was a cheap version. There was no filling whatsoever in the wontons.

My friend's dish was even worse. She ordered the chicken lo mein, and it was an inedible mess of dry overcooked noodles with like maybe one or two pieces of overcooked bean sprouts mixed into the dry pile somewhere, and basically no chicken at all. Plus when she bought a bottled beer, it was expired by over a year and a half.

I don't understand how this place has 4 stars. I don't understand what ANYONE else was seeing with this restaurant. This was not only bad, it was an absolute travesty. Not a single dish was cooked properly. Not a single dish even had the ingredients or flavors that you're expecting a dish with that name to have. Everything was overcooked. Everything was old and stale. Everything had the most bare-bones vegetables/ingredients that it could possibly have. This was by far the worst Chinese restaurant I've ever been to, and it's not even close. (And this is coming from someone who grew up going to cheap 4-dollar Chinese buffets in hick towns in middle-of-nowhere Ohio. Trust me, they were all WAY better than this.)

This is the first 1-star review that I've EVER given out, because almost every single restaurant I've been to has at least some redeeming qualities. This...

I don't know if they are under new management or what's going on but customer service went from great to absolutely miserable.

Edit: Gave this place a second chance. Made a huge purchase for a bunch of my students. They forgot a bunch of food. Mind you they pack everything and staple the bags closed so you can't check anything. I get back to my office and start handing out the food mid way realizing so many items are missing. I call the business back to explain the items were missing. The lady hung up on me because I asked her to stop screaming at me over the phone. My personal opinion she thought if she yelled she would come out the one right in the situation. I gave up after that. Not even an hour later the nut case calls me and asked if I was coming back for my missing items. Girllll no I'm not coming back after you took my money, denied the items were missing, made my students share with their peers, and then an hour later admit your wrong. This place has absolutely gone...

This was one of the most enjoyable restaurant outings I've ever had, and definitely the best Chinese restaurant I've ever been to. The atmosphere is incredibly relaxing and enjoyable with lots of colorful decorations and a large fish tank front and center in the dining room. The prices are very good, as I got a bowl of wonton soup, a large bowl of rice, and a combo meal of chicken lo mein and beef and broccoli, all for $13. We have enough leftovers for another meal. The best part of my experience, though, was the service. The waiters were quick and friendly, the food did not take long to come out but was warm and well-prepared. A little girl who seemed to be the daughter of the owners made our visit twice as enjoyable as it would have been otherwise. She was hilarious and incredibly entertaining, and kept us company while we enjoyed our meal. All in all, I definitely hope to come back again, and I would recommend this restaurant to anybody who wants to eat out for...