Empero Taste

I dont normally hate on local restaurant near my hood but damm does it really take 20 minutes for salt and pepper spareribs over rice for lunch? Seriously people who walked in 10 minutes after me, got their food before me? I don’t wanna sound ungrateful but the food service score of 74% also doesn’t help your reputation as a outer Richmond Chinese restaurant.

Relaxing environment, quick serve time and decent portions sizes will have us coming back. Flavors were on par and the entire meal was inexpensive considering we had a 2.5lb crab on the table.

Good food.
Good service.
Large portions.
Nuff said.

I own the motorcycle shop across the street. And I am so lucky to have a fantastic restaurant on the same block as me.
There are a few restaurants near us but this one does it best. Prices are fair and food is delicious. The ladies are also very sweet and courteous.
Did I mention how lucky we are to be neighbors with this awesome Chinese restaurant?

From the persective of a vegetarian. Got the mixed veggie stir fried rice noodle. Super tasty, and guaranteed will not die from malnutrition — unlike other chinese seafood restaurants that attempt making something vegetarian for u (they simply take out the meats and ur left with just noodles, sauce, and onions if ur lucky). My rice noodles had lots of huge chunks of an assortment of 10 types of veggies!

We found this place after a long drive and both of us were very hungry. I plan on returning again and again! The food is good, hot, and plentiful. Oh, and did I mention the prices are cheap? (Not LA cheap, but SF cheap.) The only thing I would do next time is bring more people – the portions are HUGE! I always need a to-​go box.
Empero Taste is located in the Outer Richmond, so parking is not impossible. The restaurant itself is spacious and looks clean. The clientele is by and large Chinese (a good indicator of decent food, I think.)
I love the simplicity of the food. I always order the fried rice because it’s light and fluffy without all that heavy sauce. Everything I’ve tried is delicious.

More like three and a half. Good food, attentive service. Still exploring menu, but everyone seems to get the sizzling beef plate. The giant clam with vermicelli/​bean thread is killer.

This place has some really nice fried flounder (according to my grandparents). I couldn’t have any because I’m in the middle of my volleyball season. The thing I did enjoy was the giant clam with vermicelli. That was the highlight of the meal. The crab soup is nice and rich compared to other restaurants and is great to lead off the meal. Other than that, all the other dishes are good, but not great. I will certainly come back at some point to have some fried flounder after my season is finished.

They specialize in large groups and don’t seem to be able to scale back portions for individuals. This is awesome because it means you’re going to have food to take home even if you eat a lot.
Oh, and it’s cheep.
It might have felt a little strange to be the only non-​Asian person in the place, but dang the food was good and could feed an army.

Best Chinese food you can get for the price.
Also is the best salt pepper squid I’ve ever had. I think they list it as «Fried Squid» on the menu, but you should reconfirm just in case.

They came back from the depths of disappearance. They’re back with a vengence. The food, the service, the prices all great. Came back to check this place out again and its living up to the new hipe. Had a group of 10, each ordered a dish, full size, plenty of food, walked out less than 10.00 per person. Family style, sharing … good deals. They have banquet style menu, wah choy — daily specials. I RECOMMEND this place.

I’ve come here just a handful of times even though I frequent the area often. The food is actually pretty good, though nothing that holds my attention. It’s exactly what I look for in Chinese food without the heavy greasy lingering feeling afterwards.
I’ve ordered the Ying Yang fried rice (must try if you’you’ve never had it). It’s a plain egg rice fried topped with two kinds of sauces: tomato red sauce with onions and chicken & and a white sauce with egg white base, peas and shrimp. Mix the two together or eat each sauce separately, but either way, you won’t be sorry! Also ordered garlic eggplant and Mongolian beef (nice medium spice level). My total was $ 29 for the 3 entrees.
Parking is relatively easy with lots of residential space.

New spot my family choose for my grandma’s birthday. Although the window sign said they have a health rating of 77 the interior dining area looked clean. Who knows what the kitchen looks like…
The staff was super friendly, the food came out relatively quick and most of the dishes had decent sized portions. Some looked a little skimpy, like the honey walnuts prawns. The salt and pepper pork chops pieces had too much fat on them. Their (over)use of msg will probably prevent me from coming back again unless the family decides to come back as a whole.

3.5 ! Not bad. Came here with bf’s family to celebrate his bday dinner. It’s not bad. Generous portions. Service was fast. Food was decent. Would come back — had a ton of left overs. really liked the honey beef cubes :)

Came here tonight for my grandfathers 90^th birthday! Had a little family reunion going on even though we live within 10 minutes of each other, its rare the family is together all at once with our busy lives.
Spotted my cousin crossing the street as I was looking for parking and she pointed at one right outside the restaurant. Score! Everyone else had also found very near by street parking so you won’t have to worry about that.
Ordered a variety of dishes but I don’t eat meat so my options were limited. I had two bowls of the egg white and shrimp soup. Kind of bland without the white pepper. I also had about 20 of the black bean oysters and a couple of fried shrimps.
Service was whatever. Better than your usual rude Chinese waitresses I suppose. Had to ask them to change our plates halfway through the meal. I saw them prepare about 7 massive bags of take out so I think this place is popular for that.
The dessert at the end was the best part especially because no one had bought cake. WTF a birthday with no cake? Apparently it was at the request of my grandfather to not get a cake though. Good thing the yummy red bean soup made up for it!

When I moved into the neighborhood, I thought this would be a convenient place to grab dinner on weeknights. So at the beginning I would order food to-​go. The food is ok. Nothing spectacular. But one time, I ordered clams and I ate clams… and SAND! But soon I noticed their bad practices.
During the day on a weekday (so less foot traffic), I saw one of the workers out on the street cracking what looked like shells in the gutter. I mean, IN THE STREET. It’s almost like they forgot that there was a kitchen where you could do that. So it makes me wonder what other shady stuff they’ve done with the food.
I know I can choose whether I eat here or not. But there has been several instances when the restaurant decided the best time to run a loud generator is at 1 AM on a weeknight which without saying, is just rude. And tossing oil in the street? Been there, done that. Without a doubt, this place is cheap for large portions as other reviewers have said but that’s because they cut corners and take this neighborhood for granted.

When this place was called Best Panda, we came here about 15 years ago when Kams was shut down for vacation. I remembered that the place was empty and my youngest daughter and I went there. However, the staff just ignored us and we finally walked out. Now that it is called Empero Taste, we thought it might be different.
An associate raved about this place and provided her favorites. We arrived on a Tuesday evening (5 PM) when there were only one set of customers. The restaurant is clean and well lit. We tried to order chow fun, but the waitress said they were sold out. How can you sell out of chow fun this early in the evening? It is like being out of rice and chow fun is a staple.
Finally we ordered some comparison foods — sizzling rice soup ($ 6.99), mongolian beef ($ 7,95), house special chow mein ($ 6.99), honey sesame chicken ($ 7.50). Before we had an opportunity to have much soup, the staff brought out all the dishes. It seems like they should have waited, but they just dumped it on the table.
The soup had a nice flavor, but really was devoid of anything that would resemble a quality sizzling rice soup, though it did have lots of green onions. At first they brought the soup, but forgot the rice. They then brought out 4 squares of deep fried rice and place it into the soup to make it sizzle. As the waiter ladled the soup, he didn’t bother to take the soup spoons out of the bowl.
The mongolian beef lack any sort of «hotness» that you would expect from a dish like this. Maybe it was made too much for «western taste buds». It did have nice chunks of yellow and green onions.
The honey chicken consisted of bits of deep fried chicken heavily battered and covered with honey and sesame. It reminded me of those chicken poppers at fast food restaurants. As I said, it was mostly batter with only small pieces of chicken.
The house special chow mein was nothing special. It consisted of mainly noodles with a sprinkling of calamari, red and green onions, chicken and ham pieces and «one» shrimp.
The service is only so-​so and they never came back to ask about the food. Again, this is a series of inadequate Cantonese places that we have tried, regardless of the good intentions of associate recommendations. Would we come here again? Probably not, as their are plenty of middling and inadequate Chinese restaurants to chose from.

Come here for my parents’ church annual luncheon. Did like family style 10 course meal. We had spareribs, fried rice, soup, crab and lobsters, abalone and bok choy, fish, honey walnut shrimp, clams, and seafood plate. although their food are good and had a lot of flavor but i felt they put a lot of msg on their food. You can get your money worth since you can get a lot on one dish and their price is very reasonable. If you eat too much, you can always go to the beach for a while since the beach is a few blocks away from this restaurant.
Whenever i do come here, the staffs are always friendly and the service is not bad. The food do come out at a fair time.

I just had them cater a school lunch for me. The food was excellent and there was plenty of it too. It also came hot, not lukewarm. It literally came down to about $ 6 per person for a buffet. Where can you get that?
What we had:
Veggie Chow Mein (ok. A bit on the wet side especially if you were unfortunate enough to get a scoop from the bottom)
Shrimp Fried Rice (good)
Egg roll (they put vermicelli noodles in it!)
Potsticker (I think these were frozen but still good)
broccoli beef (a fan favorite. We ran out)
Orange chicken (ditto)
Braised tofu and mushrooms (we got a lot of this left. Still good but I think there were a lot left cuz some of the kids didn’t want it)
Sweet and sour pork — I’m eh on this only because it was a soggy goopy mess.
Overall it was the best bang for our buck.

Parking in this ‘hood?
Tough.
Lunar New Year’s Eve Dinner?
630.
Divey digs?
Yup.
Pleasant company?
Naturally.
Play pass the baby?
Gimme.
Seafood soup?
OK.
My opinion of the fried pork?
Salty.
Kid’s opinion of the fried pork?
«Scrumptious»
Fried chicken dish?
Dry.
Peking duck skin?
Greasy.
Prawn and Walnuts dish?
Delish!
Other dishes?
Forgettable.
Red bean soupy dessert?
Ick.
Wish I was at Kirin instead?