Empire Fine Chinese Cuisine Review: New restaurant at Takashimaya S.C. Ngee Ann City

Empire Fine Chinese Cuisine is a new Chinese restaurant at Takashimaya Shopping Centre in Ngee Ann City. This new restaurant at level 5 opened two months ago and adds to the wide range of Chinese dining options when shopping at Taka.

What is the new Empire Fine Chinese Cuisine restaurant? According to its website, it offers “… top-notch culinary execution of traditional Cantonese and Teochew delights” with chefs from Michelin Star restaurants flown in exclusively for this restaurant.

The restaurant is decorated in a plush, ornate fashion. Whether you like it or not is a matter of taste, but at least it is different from the run of the mill and the seats are very comfortable. There are a few private dining rooms at Empire Fine Chinese cuisine restaurant. It is not a large restaurant and the common dining area filled up very quickly at lunch time. It is a good idea to reserve in advance. By the way the crowds at Takashimaya SC are already building up. We see long queues into the carpark and popular restaurants are full, even on a weekday. Perhaps the last week rush to Christmas shopping has begun – so be warned.

Empire Fine Chinese Cuisine Menu

The Empire Chinese restaurant is a full service restaurant with a comprehensive Chinese cuisine menu. The a la carte menu contains expensive Chinese banquet classics like sharks’ fin, birds’ nest, abalone etc. But there are also regular Chinese restaurant dining items that are more affordable. We were there for a quick lunch and focused on the dim sum menu (pictures below).

Empire Dim Sum Lunch

Here are the dim sum items that we ate from there, listed from ascending order of enjoyment.

The roast pork ($12, picture above) was quite ordinary and was the least liked item of the lunch. We found the crackling skin too dense and hard. We tried two other common dim sum items – baked BBQ Kurobuta pork pastry ($5.80) and deep-fried bean curd skin with prawn ($6.80, pictures below). These were better and comparable to similar items from Chinese restaurants in Orchard Road.

We thought we should have some vegetables as well and the poached HK vegetables ($9.80, picture below) was a good choice. A plain vegetable dish flavoured with oyster sauce, it was cooked just right and provided a break from the oily dishes.

Our favourite dishes of the day at Empire restaurant were two less common dim sum dishes – pan-fried prawn cake with string bean ($16, picture above) and stuffed minced shrimp in 3 types of vegetables ($7.80, picture below). The latter was a mini claypot containing eggplant, tofu and bitter gourd stuffed with prawn past. It sounds like humble yong tau fu, but it was the best item of the day as the sauce and the texture of the items were brilliantly executed.

Totally new, full-service Chinese restaurant openings in Orchard Road are rare occurrences. The service at Empire was not as slick as the two big names in town, but was friendly and helpful. It is good to have another Chinese dining concept in Singapore.