Imperial Chinese Sea Food Restaurant 08/2012 (Glen Waverley)

Suddenly, without notice, one of our most favoured destinations for Chinese cuisine, Imperial Kingdom, was gone. Equally suddenly, with no obvious fanfare, it was reborn as Imperial Chinese. The place has been beautifully renovated. It's been partly opened up with the removal of the island bar and the side area has been set up as three private dining areas each for 12 customers.

They have new lights,

new modern curtains,

a new reception area

and a new shrine next to where the former reception counter was. The lobster aquarium has been enlarged to carry fish and abalone and moved too

opening the entrance foyer a little.
We went for a yum cha and were surprised that there were so many customers for lunch on a Wednesday. The system remains as before with trolleys of small serves constantly passing.

If something was not visible it could be ordered and turned up quite promptly. We were very impressed with this yum cha. Every dish we had was excellent. The serves were larger than usual and the price much the same or a little cheaper than before. We tried a fair sample and nothing disappointed.
Meat balls.

Pork and peanut dumpling.

Prawn, deep fried in batter.

Prawns rolled in a soft noodle pastry.

Eggplant stuffed with prawn.

Pork ribs, as good as ever. Stuffed scallops.

And custard tarts.

And all this cost us less than $50.

If you were going to award a hat to a suburban Chinese restaurant this would be the one.
We'll be back often and for the a la carte too.
Score: 14.75/20
We did come back and had a few different dishes that did not all work as well as they might have. In particular the Shanghai dumplings failed to retain their soupy juices because the pastry was breached! Salt and pepper octopus, or was it calamari, were under seasoned and unusually chewy.Parsnip cake never seems to change, always moorish. Chicken pie excellent but don't let them get cold. Chicken feet, yum. And the dessert trolley!