Imperial China

This is my first Unilocal review ever. I can’t believe the low rating that this place have. I just stumbled on this place today and was pleasantly surprised! It is the one of the best Chinese restaurant I’ve tried in my last four years in London. I loved all the dim sum dishes I ordered, especially the prawn dumpling and the prawn noodle. The seafood crispy noodle was so flavorful too! I almost felt like I was eating in Hong Kong! It did take a while for the dim sum to arrive after ordering, but when it did arrive and the freshness and delicious sweetness of every bite was worth the wait! I am going back next week!

03÷04÷2013− It was freezing cold last night and we wanted to go to a restaurant with parking close to the door. We stopped at this restaurant that we have passed many times on the A-​41, only to end up wishing that we would have kept driving or walked a mile in the cold for a better place to eat.
We ordered the all you can eat menu for £17.50 each. You choose two starters and two main courses and if you finish them, they’ll bring you something else. Well that’s the theory anyway.
In practice, we waited around 25 minutes for the appetisers to appear. I ordered hot and sour soup and minced vegetables in lettuce leaves. The lettuce was great– the minced vegetables were some kind of concoction of canned corn and various other vegetables that tasted like kitchen rubbish. I ate the lettuce. The soup tasted like a strong brew of soy or maybe bike tires. When I mentioned that the vegetable dish wasn’t very good to the waitress, she didn’t even look my way. Oh well.
It took another 20 minutes for the mains to arrive and honeyed pork chops turned out to be thin slices of rubbery pork stewed in a sickly liquid. The sweet and sour prawns were okay and had a few fresh vegetables in with them. The rest was inedible.
We won’t be going back and they are now switching it to a buffet restaurant. I guess because they can’t speed up the service.
The waitress was arrogant and the staff seemed to be more interested in chatting with each other than interacting with the customers.
My view on this restaurant? Give it a miss…

Guess, what!!! They are not serving dim sum anymore. They stopped it on 3 rd March 2013!
What a shame. They have lost my custom.

Possibly deserves a 5 star rating but then I’d have no way of rating the super duper Michelin starred restaurants !
Food is certainly way above any other chinese restaurants I have been to.
Highly recommended for family and special occasions.
Large room but also good for a reasonably intimate dinners for two.
Helpful staff happy to explain new untried dishes.
Only problem is the address says Potters Bar and it’s in Watford not even close to PB.

I can’t believe all the bad reviews I read here. I went to this restaurant twice and it was lovely both times. The first time I asked for ice tea but they didn’t have it on their menu, but they went out of their way to make some especially for me :). The food was lovely and the staff was very very friendly. We got the food quite fast and it was a lot. ot tasted fresh and very good. When we initially asked for two portions of special fried rice, they adviced us to take just one because it was a lot, which it was. I thought that was nice, they don’t have to do that. Really don’t understand all these negative reviews This place was amazing and I can’t wait to go back there again.

Always had passed restaurant so as my son insisted on chinese i thought it will be a good idea, i could not have been more wrong. On first entering the restaurant we both were quite impressed with the décor and service was prompt, only if i could say the same for the food. Any how we ordered mine being a chicken fried rice and my sons a chicken chowmein, it was no longer than three minutes from ordering when we saw a waitress approaching our table with two plates filled like mountains, this is when alarm bells began to ring. neither of the dishes looked, smelled or tasted of any chinese we had ever had before. Niether of us could eat our dish, infact the food stunk i think i was just to polite so forced down a few mouthfuls and then asked for the bill and when that came it was close to twenty quid, just as well we had not ordered in drinks. To be honest i can’t even be sure they served us chicken neither myself or son felt it tasted like chicken. Won’t be going there again, sorry have to go just feeling to vomit

I drive past this place on my way to work everyday and have often wondered what it was like seeing as its in an odd position right on the A41. Well I was nearby on a Saturday lunchtime when myself and my fiancée decided to try it out. The first impressions were great, from the pergoda’s and a little bridge over a koi carp pond leading to the door, to the front desk and friendly staff. I did wonder whether it was going to be all style over substance but upon entering the restaurant we discovered it was full of Chinese families eating, always a good sign. The prices seemed a little high but I guess the décor has to be paid for somehow. We decided on the set menu for 2 as it made a quite expensive menu extremely good value. The food was very nice, although the set menu had all the standard Chinese classics like crispy duck, sweet and sour pork, lemon chicken etc… they were all very nice. I was therefore going to give it 4 stars. However about an hour after we left the restaurant both myself and my fiancée found ourselves suffering from an almost unquenchable thirst seeing as no alcohol had been consumed I found this odd. That was until we both realised why everything had been so tasty, the food must’ve been absolutely packed full of MSG, a side effect of which is thirst, and judging by how ridiculously thirsty we were they mustve used loads of the stuff, hence only 2 stars.

Went to Imperial China on mother’s day and had an awful experience.
Neither the kitchen or the front of house staff could handle a fully booked restaurant at all. Service was quite slow and after two of our main dishes had arrived, we had to wait 15 minutes for rice to be brought to our table. By that time our main courses had gone cold. It was only then we were told that the third dish we had ordered had sold out.
No decent apology was made to make up for the terrible service and they had the cheek to add a 12.5% discretionary service charge to the bill !
The dishes are overpriced and from my experience you get more for your money in china town (london).
We were extremely disappointed especially as it was mother’s day and we will definitely never visit again.
On the plus side, the restaurant is very nicely decorated but I’d rather eat in a run-​down restaurant with good, efficient service and decent authentic chinese food any day.

As a family we are always on the look out for new places for yumcha, so when my mum and dad asked me if I wanted to check it out with them I was pretty much first in the car.
This is the second Imperial China, from the restaurant in Chinatown. On the out skirts of Watford it’s easy to find and there’s plenty of parking. If you’re coming for dim sum I think they serve until 5pm on week days not too sure on weekends. Staff are friendly and very efficient and the restaurant is really tastefully decorated.
The dim sum we had was fantastic, and my mum, dad and aunty are not ones to throw around praise if it’s not deserved. I think we may have found a regular haunt here.
YUM!