Visit
The Empire Garden facade on Washington Street — a red sign reading EMPIRE GARDEN, DIM SUM · CHINESE DELICACIES & COCKTAILS across the front of an ornate 1903 theatre building, with the great arched window above it and Chinese lettering either side.

Boston Chinatown · 帝苑大酒樓

The carts start at half eight.

Cart dim sum every day from 8:30 until three, served upstairs in the balcony hall of a 1903 vaudeville theatre. Roast meats, whole fish, lobster, and a room that has been hosting Chinatown’s weddings for years.

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The dining room under the theatre’s original proscenium arch — gilded plasterwork, a painted dome, red lanterns hanging, and round tables laid with pink cloths beneath it.
Five open-topped siu mai dumplings in a steel steamer basket, each finished with a dot of orange roe.
A platter of stir-fried lobster, shell-on pieces glazed and piled up with scallion.
Lion dance troupes in red, yellow and white costumes performing between banquet tables in the packed theatre hall, guests watching from their seats.

The theatre

  1. 01

    Built in 1903 for vaudeville

    Arthur Vinal drew it as the Globe Theatre — French Renaissance, 1,536 seats, opened in September 1903. Abbott and Costello played here. It became a Loew’s cinema in 1947, then in the eighties it ran Hong Kong action films as the Pagoda. The proscenium arch is still above you while you eat.

  2. 02

    Carts, not a checklist

    From 8:30 until three the carts come to you and you look before you decide. Siu mai, har gow, cheung fun, lotus-leaf rice, custard tarts. Between eleven and two there is usually a wait for a table, which tells you everything about whether it is worth it.

  3. 03

    After three, the kitchen shows off

    The dining-room menu is the other half of the place: lobster out of the wok with ginger and scallion, whole fish, roast meats off the hook, the dishes a Cantonese kitchen builds a reputation on rather than the ones it sells by the basket.

  4. 04

    And on the right day, the lions

    A hall this size stopped being just a restaurant a long time ago. Weddings, association dinners, New Year — several hundred people, ten courses, and a lion dance going between the tables while the plates keep coming.

What to order

Off the cart, or off the hook

The carts run until three and the kitchen runs until close, so what to order depends entirely on when you walk in. Before three, take whatever looks best as it passes. After three, order the roast meats and something whole.

  • Thick slices of barbecued char siu pork with dark caramelised edges, fanned over stems of Chinese broccoli.

    Char Siu 叉燒

    Barbecued pork, lacquered dark red at the edges and still pink through the middle, sliced thick and laid over gai lan. The first thing to check in any Cantonese kitchen and the reason people keep coming back to this one.

  • A combination platter of sliced roast duck, crackling pork belly and char siu arranged in rows with carved carrot flowers and shredded garnish.

    Three Roast Meats 燒肉拼盤

    Roast duck, crisp-skinned pork belly and char siu on one platter, carved to order off the hooks in the window, with the carrot flowers nobody has ever asked them to stop making.

  • A whole flatfish, deep-fried golden and scored across the body, on an oval platter in a dark soy sauce with spring onion.

    Whole Fried Fish

    Brought out whole, scored and fried until the fins go crisp, then finished with soy and scallion. Ordered for the table, eaten down to the bone, and the one dish that makes the room go quiet for a second when it lands.

The full theatre hall seen from the floor — the gilded arch and chandelier above, painted panels along the wall, and round banquet tables with lazy susans laid out beneath.
The proscenium is original. So is the ceiling you keep looking at.

The room

You are eating in the balcony
of a vaudeville house.

Up the curving staircase from Washington Street there is a foyer, and past the foyer the room opens out: a gilded proscenium arch, painted murals, a chandelier, and forty-odd round tables with lazy susans on them. Most restaurants that call themselves grand are describing the tablecloths. This one is describing the ceiling.

The building went up in 1903 as the Globe Theatre and spent forty years on vaudeville, then forty more as a cinema. Empire Garden kept the plasterwork. Nothing about the dim sum is precious about it — the carts go past the same arch that Gypsy Rose Lee played in front of, and the tea comes in a steel pot.

The size is the point as much as the decoration. It is one of the few rooms in Chinatown that can seat a wedding, and on a Sunday morning it is full of three generations of the same families at the same tables.

  • 1903The Globe Theatre opened here, 1,536 seats
  • 3When the carts stop. Kitchen keeps going until close
  • 7Days a week, from 8:30

Visit

690 Washington Street,
Boston Chinatown

690 Washington Street
Boston, MA 02111

The dining room is upstairs — in through the doors on Washington Street and up the curving staircase to the first-floor foyer. Dim sum runs from 8:30 to three; between eleven and two on a weekend expect to wait, and the wait moves faster than it looks. The room takes large parties and banquets, which is worth asking about early for a date that matters.

Call (617) 482‑8898Get directions

Open

Monday – Thursday
8:30 AM – 9:30 PM
Friday – Saturday
8:30 AM – 10:30 PM
Sunday
8:30 AM – 9:30 PM

Doors at 8:30 every day of the week, an hour later on Friday and Saturday nights. The carts stop at three.