Royal Seafood

After trying the golden cake for the first time, I decided that I must try all the Cantonese dim sum dishes from this restaurant sometime. They are all exquisitely made. Chive and egg dumplings, sesame rolls, beef balls, spare rib noodles, shrimp and tofu skin rolls, and beef brisket and radish. There are too many individual items. I also want to try taro and plum duck, steamed meatballs, braised double dragons with scallions, and crab roe vermicelli casserole.

I've been eating at this spot for probably 30 years! As I recall it had another name years ago. If you are looking for terrific, traditional dim sum this is the spot. They still have the classic carts (tip if you can get a table near the dumb waiter, you'll get first shot at the freshest plates). I just celebrated New Years with old friends and ordered a plate of long life e fu noodles for good luck. They have always been welcoming to non-Chinese such as myself, you just have to keep an ear open for your number to be called. And don't panic if it's crowded, they will get to you!

This place has been around for like 40 years the staff and vibe is from the 1980/90s era and the food has change. Good traditional Cantonese dim sum with the push cart serving you in quick succession. Almost like a buffet and numerous dishes one after another, the standouts were the beef Rice rolls, Shrimp Rice rolls, stick rice w mixed meats, the egg custards, the chicken feet’s and Lotus wrapped Rice specials, the flavors and taste have changed and the people primarily Chinese are also from Another Era, now everyone is older and still going to the same place. Like Americans going to that old Diner its just so familiar for Asian old school food that our parents took us too, many decades ago. Now it’s our turn to show hospitality to the new generations of friends that will enjoy Dim sum and all its pomp and ceremony.

Hearty Chinese food which is all you want sometimes. Service can be a bit hard to grab but they’re fast here. Soft shell crab was good, short ribs were a bit tough and the Siew Mai was comforting. Overall decent place for banquet dining.

Here’s the good - this is a large space in Chinatown - lots of tables, seating for large parties. The restaurant was popular, had many full tables but no wait if you suddenly showed up with 20 people. They did not charge a corking fee 🍷🍷Lobster and crab are market rate and so we asked and learned lobster 🦞 was $25 which we thought was very reasonable and in line with other establishments in Chinatown. Royale offers a large banquet menu starting at $498-$900+ - which is on the table to consider, different menus to choose which level works for you (each was enough for 8 to 10 people) the banquet menus are in Mandarin so use your google translator to view. The not so great - we should have read the reviews and ordered dim sum. We ordered lobster with garlic and scallion, salt and pepper lobster 🦞 seafood soup and fried seafood basket. Lobsters were lukewarm, we strongly feel that our ginger scallion lobster - which came out first - was a send back order as it arrived quickly after we placed our order, before our soup and was only warm - also on the small size ☹️ the table next to us also ordered the same lobster 🦞 dish, it was almost double in size and we could see the steam and smell their ginger and scallion…not ours. The ginger scallion was the best flavored item. If you like it not spicy this is your place. The fried seafood basket was fresh seafood which we appreciated. The level of service also was just okay - we asked for hot sauce and soy sauce and never received the soy sauce. We couldn’t get soy sauce, in a Chinese food restaurant. I would say this was probably one step up from your neighborhood Chinese delivery, the seafood was fresh just not hot and if you have sauces you like at home, this would be a good take out and use your sauce at home place.