Imperial Mandarin Restaurant

The only place I know to get LA quality Chinese food. Great food, bad parking, decent prices, always leaving happy.

The first time I came here with a friend was randomly at 10am cuz we didn’t know where to go and just wanted to go on a whim on an early weekend. Realized it was a place that did serve dim sum with carts. San diego isn’t known for dim sum but this place got some of them right. However, the 2^nd time I came, there was no carts. Maybe its only a weekend thing. I also ordered the lobster noodles. Its quite pricey, other reviews say its amazing but it was pretty standard. I guess there isn’t many places that serves this dish in San Diego. I’d come here if I want some basic Dim Sum. But if i wanted a true dim sum experience with the ambiance, I wouldn’t recommend this place

Folks that gave this place a three or four star must not have had Chinese food before. Or else they were very lucky.
Came here for dinner a party of four. Ordered 5 dishes and 1 soup and none of them are good.
The Seafood Tofu soup tasted OK. But the presentation is dull — all white without any color. Even then I can grade it as a B-​,
The rest of the dishes are awful.
The Chicken dish is strange, has a white sauce over plain chicken. Not commonly done in the Cantonese world.
The sea cucumber was ok but slightly too hard. Should be much softer.
The broccoli beef dish is hilarious — beef is tough and with gristle. Broccoli is OK.
The claypot dish — dried shrimp with vermicelli clay pot — is strange, whole stem of pak choy and is totally tasteless, not until you get to the bottom of the pot, then there is some taste there.
The beef tendon dish, supposedly a specialty of the house, is down right gross.
Pricing is OK. Ambiance is noisy and very low end Cantonese Restaurant. Not a place that I would recommend.
This is really a 1 star to 2 star type restaurant. You will be better off to visit Panda Express where meat is meat, vegetables are vegetables.

This place is pretty decent if you are looking for some authentic Chinese food.
The place did get smaller and parking is pretty tough, especially due to the Original House of Pancakes near by. They have a ton of regular Chinese and I usually order Hong Kong Style crispy noodles, salt and pepper shrimp, Mongolian beef, Imperial Mandarin fried rice, Peking duck and a tons more. The food is pretty good, and the prices are way cheaper than Jasmine.
They also do Dim Sum on the weekend mornings which is pretty good too. Service is alright, although it could be a little slow at times. Great bang for my buck and quite satisfying in taste and quantity.

I must be honest we didn’t even get to eat. Walked in, Sat down and the menu is really hard to understand. We asked for help from a Waiter, then Waitress and they couldn’t speak English to help us. Needless to say, we walked out. Sadly We didn’t get to try the food.

My favorite Chinese restaurant. Been going here for for 28 years. Same people has been working here food has always been the same consistent and amazing

This establishment is among the worst that I have ever been to. The service was slower than molasses and everyone in my party turned a year older while we were there. The food was vomit-​inducing, and even that vomit tasted better than the «food» they served there. The dishes they put on our table were practically frozen and I chipped my tooth trying to eat it. There were bones in the har gao and the raddish cake, and my grandma ruined her dentures trying to chew the dim sum. I will never go back to this restaurant ever again. Service was terrible and the waitresses were ugly!

This place sucks huge panda balls. The chicken we ordered were just slices of chicken fat drenched in more fatty grossness. The dim sum also sucked, for example the siu mai had bones in it and I choked and almost died. What made it worse is I had no tea to wash it down since their service was slow af. There were about 2 workers for 600 people so as you can imagine the service was crazy slow.

Foods tasted really bad, old, and stale. Not the quality im used to in North Cal. Second time here. Service meh.

Worst place ever!!!
This place lacks skills big time. The food is awful. I could go through a long list of things wrong, however I will keep it short and to the point.
1. Customer Service lacks integrity
2. Panda Express serves better clean food with out bones.
3. The owner looked at me and wanted me to eat it.
4. The place should bring a passionate chef.
5. If I could give 0 stars I would.
6. Had 3 bites and told them this food sucks. They could care less.
7. Fried rice is just mixed with soy sauce no fried rice.
8. Just stay away from this place.
I just left there and a am ready to vomit.
Ugh $$! $$

Not a good experience. So sad. My first clue should’ve been when I bit into the soggy chewy wonton chips served as an appetizer… but no, we still decided to order anyway.
We ordered Hong Kong noodles with chicken, which was flavorless and the chicken resembled canned chicken. We also ordered the Kung pao chicken and it came out as gummy, mushy, possibly undercooked stringy pieces of meat attached to each other. Some pieces still had bone in it. Uggghhhh… I’m seriously gagging while writing this LOL.
So, after picking through our food we came to the conclusion that we just couldn’t eat it. I was really disappointed because we were so hungry. The waitress… who’s face would probably crack if she tried to smile at anyone, walked by us and we stopped her. She asked if we wanted to go containers. We explained we didn’t like the way the chicken was prepared and showed her the questionable pieces and she said «have you ever eaten here before, this is how our food is». She then proceeded to speak to another woman in Chinese walked away and brought us over the check and said that the owners sister said there is nothing wrong with the food, here is your check. So rude, didn’t offer anything in its place or even to cook it more for us. She put the bill on the table and stood there waiting for us to pay. So we paid and we left.
Do not eat here!!! Trust me!!! There are so many better options, even Panda Express is 1 million times better!

Worse dim sum place in San Diego. We’ve tried: China Max, Emerald and Jasmine. And this place was by far the worst. I’m not sure if it’s because we went at 11:00 am, exactly when they opened doors. Either way, it wasn’t too great here.
Customer service is ¼. The older lady that was our waitress didn’t seem to care about anything. When two older couples came in, she gave them so much attention. We, on the other hand, she did not. I believe it’s because we look young and broke to her.
We only ordered: 2 Dim Sum orders and it took 30 mins to come out. They didn’t even have the most popular dishes available. Ordering dim sum dishes was hard because there’s no dim sum carts, Instead the waitress gave us a piece of paper listing all the dim sum options, with no pictures and just words/​chinese characters we can’t even read. It was hard for us to choose, so at the end, we only chose 2 dishes, the shu mai and har gow. The shu mai’s wrapping was sticking to the tray and sticky. So sticky that we couldn’t get it out. The har gow’s meat was a bit chewy. Both dishes was not my cup of tea.
Won’t be back. After we got our two dim sum order, we ate it and immediately left to go to a different dim sum restaurant.
Whoever states this dim sum is the best, must never tried a good place before. If I had to choose, I rather go to China Max, Emerald and Jasmine. Not here.

I love Chinese food and trying out new places, I was close by this restaurant so I tried it out. It was very very average. We arrived slightly before the dinner rush so we were one of three tables.
After being seated the server wanted to take our order before we even opened the menu! We had to tell her 3 times within 5 minutes we needed more time to look at the menu since it was our first time in, she just seemed annoyed by that. Our main dishes came out 15 minutes before our appetizer, which was the pork buns. At first I thought they just forgot about the appetizer and we told her to forget about it since we were full from the main dishes, 2 minutes later she came out with our pork buns. My orange chicken wasn’t very good, it was very orangey but lacked in the chicken area, it tasted dry and soggy. My husband enjoyed his beef dish, said it was very spicy. The pork buns were very good, I would definitely order those again!
Overall, it was ok not great. If you’re hungry it will do in a pinch. If I came back I would try something different, or possibly only get the porn buns. The prices were great.

enjoyed the food as it is awesome and the prices were good
I enjoyed myself here with a friend for his 31^st bday
the beer prices were great and i like the location
would definitely come back

Came here on Saturday with a group of friend for dim sum around 11:30am. We were a party of 5 and were seated immediately which was nice because I was ready to get my grub on.
Ordered several different dishes. The food came via cart or tray. I always enjoy the shiu mai, chicken feet, and rice rolls with shrimp (these had to be custom ordered, but my bf tells me they usually have them on the carts). We also got the har gow, fried taro turnovers, bean curd roll in oyster sauce, sticky rice (big serving of this one), and several other dishes, but I found those were the most memorable.
Ended up being only about $ 60 for our entire table and my belly was very full and satisfied. Probably not the best dim sum I’ve ever had, but it definitely cured my craving and I really liked that there was no wait.

The food is actually quite tasty, but the service is poor, and they are extra stingy on the request for more hot sauce if you are getting a to go order. I am not sure If I would bother coming back again. I have been here several times before, and it is always an issue to get extra hot sauce (I am talking about 1 – 2 extra sauces).
The food is really goo though, so if you aren’t into spicy food, and you just wan to get your food and not care about how the service is, the check this place out.

Do you have a go to restaurant to celebrate milestones, birthdays family gatherings? My family and I have been going here for many many years. Although this restaurant went through some renovation throughout the years and the space got smaller, they continue to provide delicious food. When other restaurants closes at 9pm, I know to come here for a late dinner, when in the mood for Chinese food. They are open until midnight. Private parking lot shared with other neighboring businesses, so it can get full during peak hours. There is also a big screen TV. They have combo dishes for 2 or more people. They provide family dinners for bigger parties.
I remember driving here just for lunch with co-​workers during the week. We drove from the Golden Triangle area, La Jolla. They accept call in orders for pick up and provide catering food trays for parties. We also ordered from their catering menu and picked up the orders from past family gatherings.
I tried a lot of dishes here, but my favorites are the beef broccoli, Mongolian beef, pan fried noodles and seafood dishes. Great place to share meals, talk story and enjoy the company of others. This will always be my go to restaurant for my family and friends, hopefully for many more years to come!

Definitely do not expect great chinese cuisine here.
The food is your typical mediocre chinese stuff.
I mean, it’s nice that they have a huge menu to choose from and offer nearly everything you would want. But the quality is not up to my standards.
SETTING:
Old traditional family owned restaurant with nasty faded carpet.
They have the same tables and chairs that you would find at any traditional chinese restaurants.
They have a one flatscreen TV that sits in the middle of the room.
And poor decorations, making this place look pretty sad.
Very quiet, no music.
Food:
Wonton Soup + Add Egg Noodles
I was literally only expecting wontons and noodles only and nothing else, but they serve theirs with a mix of shrimp, bbq pork, fish, snow peas, and bamboo shoots which was nice but interesting. The soup broth was pretty plain. The wontons were disgusting. The outer layer was super soggy and had all fallen apart. The meat inside was super tiny and tasted like processed mixed meat. Everything else was generic.
I had a large order of 8 different things which I was picking up for other people, and I was SHOCKED that one chinese togo paper box of rice was supposed to be enough for three people. That is the first time I’ve ever heard of that. Usually other places I go to, its one paper box or rice PER person with each order. So I had to pay another $ 3.50 just for that paper box of rice.
You know the stereotype chinese food togo box that you can pull apart to make a bowl out of.
Furthermore, the lady told me it would be ready in 15 minutes. So I go and run an errand before I go pick it up and arrive about 20 minutes later. Then I was told that I had to wait even more.
Overall, service is slow and inefficient. And I’ve definitely had better food elsewhere.
P. S. Their online menu prices are NOT accurate! Their prices have changed and its a lot more expensive now!!!

It was our first time dining here this morning. We were the first ones to arrive around 11 a.m. right when they opened, so no wait time. That’s always a plus! We only ordered a few items from the dim sum menu: Har gow, chicken feet, scallop gow, egg tarts, steamed egg yolk bun (on accident), and fried egg noodle w/​shrimp. The Har gow was filled with plump shrimp with a very thin translucent and perfectly chewy skin. The best I’ve had in years! The egg tarts were a tad over toasted but had an undercooked filling. Flavor was good but texture was all types of off. Though, it had potential.
From their lunch and dinner menu: ½ Peking duck w/​8 steamed buns and salt & pepper squid. Both items were very good. However, ½ a duck was an extreme understatement. Luckily, I don’t like a ton of leftovers. It was a fair amount for 3 people.
There are a lot of mixed reviews on here. Bottom line is that I don’t expect much from a traditional Chinese restaurant. Imperial exceeded my expectations. The service was very friendly and attentive. The restaurant was clean and the place setting was spotless. I can’t tell you how many Chinese restaurants I’ve gone to where all of the plates, cups, utensils are all worn and scratched up. Quite frankly, it’s a huge pet peeve. So I applaud their attention to detail in this regard. Also, when I mistakenly ordered the wrong item our waitress brought me out the correct item without a problem. Even though it was my mistake. I really appreciate that she didn’t make a big fuss about it like they typically would in any other Chinese establishments. Will definitely be back again to try more from their dinner menu!

We arrived on a weekday before the lunch rush, so it was not too busy. Looking forward to the food as I’ve not been here in awhile and it’s always been very good.
Ordered the Har Gow (Steamed Shrimp dumpling), Shiu My (Steamed meat), BBQ Pork Bun (steamed) and Pan Fried Noodles with Pork to share. The shrimp was just okay, a bit dry. The Shiu My was flavorful and juicy. Love the softness of the bun paired with the sweetness of the barbeque pork… could eat a whole plate of the pork buns, well in my mind anyway. The brown sauce for the pan fried noodles is one of my favorites because they infuse the pork flavor within the sauce and the noodles. The pork itself, very moist and flavorful.
They have a huge flat screen television on the back wall that can be seen from anywhere you sit. So if you run out of things to talk about with your company or if you dine alone, you have the option to watch a show.
You don’t have to worry about waiting too long for your food here! It’s brought out promptly and steaming hot!