I was incredibly excited to go to the Empire Garden Restaurant in Boston – in part because the idea of eating in a place that was once a huge, ornate theater is inherently exciting to me, and in part because I thought I had perhaps found a spot that fellow Route 1 Views curator and abandoned theater expert Matt Lambros had not. I should have known that the odds of visiting a theater Matt hasn’t been to are vanishingly small, and sure enough, the month I visited Empire Garden – December, 2023 – was the same month he was writing an excellent history of the restaurant, which you can read here. Rather than rehashing the building’s past, I wanted instead to focus on the surreal experience of eating at Empire Garden and review the restaurant itself.

Entering the main seating area at the Empire Garden Restaurant is overwhelming. The room feels enormous, and the décor is a collision of traditional Chinese paintings and statues juxtaposed against breathtaking French Renaissance architecture. LED lights line the balcony, which is oddly boxy and plain compared to the endlessly curvy details around the stage, and empty aside from a large upside-down sign and a portable projection screen with nothing displayed on it. Because a floor was built roughly dividing the theater at the mezzanine, the proscenium arch feels unusually low. The overall effect is rather dreamlike, in the way that dreams often jumble disparate elements together in ways that don’t entirely make sense. I do love unique places, even if I don’t feel their design is entirely successful, so even though my heart ached a bit about the choices that had been made in renovating the theater, I was looking forward to enjoying a delicious meal with my wife.

Unfortunately, a delicious meal was not in our future. The dim sum carts were not operating that night, so we had to order off the menu after what felt like a very long wait, even though there were not many other patrons. We decided to start off with the Crab Rangoon and the Three Delights dinner, which consists of vegetables, chicken, beef, and shrimp. The Crab Rangoon had barely any filling, though, and the Three Delights was prepared in such a way that some ingredients – notably the vegetables, which had clearly come from one of those frozen vegetable mixes you get at the supermarket – were cold and uncooked. My wife’s cocktail tasted like syrup that wasn’t mixed with anything. The price also felt very high, especially considering what we got was nearly inedible. I’m sad to say that it was one of the worst meals I’ve had at any restaurant, and we wound up getting food from the Bahn Mi restaurant next door instead.

Afterwards, I checked reviews more closely, and there is an almost bizarre polarity. The majority of reviewers either find the food utterly amazing or profoundly bad, which leads me to wonder if your visit really depends on which cook is working that shift. Among them, there are also some wild stories of servers heckling tables over 15% tips. One reviewer wryly noted, “The place is huge and in a really cool building, but I’m not eating the building.” I’d have to agree: while checking out the dining room is a worthwhile experience, maybe stick with just an appetizer until you have an idea of whether or not the food is for you.