Regency Palace Seafood Restaurant and Lounge

Went for Hot Pot for the first time anywhere. It was Really good. They have the buffet and hot pot for supper, so there is something for everyone.

Dim sum was good and service was quite attentive. You can choose between the lunch buffet or a la carte dim sum. We went with the dim sum where you can order off of their push carts or if you wanted something specifically you can order directly from a waiter. This was our first time here and overall the experience was excellent. I would come back again.

First time I’ve had dim sum since I was in Hong Kong this summer. My overall experience was pretty good. Nothing fancy and nothing new. Everything I was looking for was available. The quality of the food good. The service was good. The washrooms were fine. I still think the value for dollar is quite decent. I would recommend this place.

I love this place for dim sum, hot pot and traditional Chinese dinner. The service is really good too. The dim sum has a lot of good varieties too. If you don’t know the name of the dim sum dish, they show you ahead of time in the cart to ensure it’s what you had in mind.

Worst service ever!!! The waiters are so rude and they don’t give a crap about anything. If you hate your job that much go work somewhere else. If you ask for anything they pretend they don’t hear you and walk away. Many weddings are held here because there the only restaurant that can handle large groups but it’s not worth it. They treat your guest poorly. The restaurant is dirty and the washrooms haven’t been cleaned. The food is only meh! I’d give them a negative star if I could.

Horrible buffet– HotPot is ok– service is BAD
Buffet selection and taste is so bad. Hotpot was okay, but the servers were so rude and they don’t even offer you drink or see how you’re doing. I’m a server and there wasn’t any «service» in that place at all.

Buffet was not bad but 5 stars goes for great Hotpot:
Many broths to choose from
Tons of meat cuts
Lots of seafood options
Lots of veggies
Tons of dipping sauces
Buffet included
Rapid service
Great location
Reasonable price for all you can eat buffet and hotpot
Room foe improvement:
Self serve drinks like lemonade and juice were room temp and not cold
Broth after a while was super oily from boiled meat and seafood and not good tasting. Would be nice if we were offered refreshed new broth…

If you’re in a bind for quick dim sum and all the other restaurants are full, Regency is the place to go. This is one large restaurant that can accommodate a lot of people.
Having said that, the food here is mediocre at best and more often than not, quickly slapped together for the mass guests. The dim sum is sloppy with very little care to the cooking techniques so critical to each morsel of yumminess. Some of the items were over cooked while others were undercooked or lacked a depth of flavor.
Like I said, unless you’re in a pinch, I’d pass on Regency as there are many other good dim sum restaurants in Calgary.

My buddy recommends Regency for hot pot. However, it was lunch, so no hot pot (dinner only). I took a look at the buffet offering. Salt and pepper squid, fried rice, noodles, ginger beef and veggies. The food looked better than food court quality, and there was always an employee there, stirring and moving items inside the warmer.
I opted to try dim sum, which came along in carts. The food was fresh and hot. The shrimp dumpling (how how) was gummy, the wrapper too thick. The shrimp was a meagre size and didn’t taste fresh. The sou mai was MUCH better. Big and juicy, nice flavour. I also tried tripe, shrimp rice roll, and some fish/​shrimp cake.
For Calgary’s downtown crowd, it’s a quick option for lunch.

Hot Pot anyone, this is some serious all you can eat buffet hot with choice of two soup base. The best part is you cook it the way like plus you get to create your own dipping sauces. There is lots to choice from you can also pick from regular buffet if you are eat hot pot but who care about that. I have uploaded photos there some photos that they ran out of food but I did not want to wait for it my food comes first. Lol. We all really enjoyed the food there. Service was good too. Full bar.

The boys and I were here for the ImaginASIAN 2014 Cultural Gala dinner on May 31.
Service was average (typical Chinese restaurant service in Calgary) – the servers did only what they were required to do (bring food to the table and clear empty plates). Even before the first dish arrived at our table, we had to walk to the bar to replace a dirty wine glass with a clean one (as it was still impossible to flag down a server).
Once the emcees made their introductions, the food started to come out fairly quickly.
1. House special combination cold platter: duck, ham, jellied beef, sliced spiced jellyfish with cilantro garnish. We’re off to a good start here!
2. Scallops and abalone mushrooms with vegetables: the whole dish was flavorful; the sugar snap peas were tender-​crisp. The addition of more carrots could have made the plate more colorful (apart from the green from the sugar snap peas, everything else was white and beige).
3. Braised duck with taro: this was an amazing dish! The duck was tender and the sauce complimented the taro and duck perfectly (not too salty).
4. Supreme crabmeat fishmaw soup: there were generous portions of fishmaw and crabmeat in this soup. Yum.
5. Creamy lobster with noodles: ahhh, heaven… There’s nothing like the combination of fresh lobster, noodles, and cream sauce.
6. Crispy chicken with onion in soy sauce: a delicious variation from the regular crispy chicken with shrimp chips. The chicken meat was tender, but not as juicy as the chicken in Ho Won.
From here onwards, things started to go downhill…
7. Stuffed bean curd with shrimp paste with vegetables: there was a substitution in the menu here. We were served dow mew (pea shoots/​greens) with whole garlic cloves. A bit oily, but delicious! Oiliness is nothing a good cup of tea can’t fix.
8. Special steamed pickerel with ginger and green onion: what, no pickerel available?!? The substitution was battered fried fish fillets (which tasted like basa, an inexpensive Vietnamese catfish) in a sweet and sour sauce. The fish was drowning in the batter (many customers left this dish unfinished). Well, I guess I shouldn’t complain much – it could have been tilapia…
9. Seafood and pineapple fried rice: rather uninspiring and utterly bland. I would even go so far to say that the kitchen cut corners and diluted the dish with more rice. It was mostly steamed white rice with hardly any seafood or pineapple in it.
10. Seasonal fruit and special cookies: I’m not a big fan of Chinese desserts, but there was a very interesting pink marshmallow-​like coconut jello (well, it tasted like a marshmallow, but not as sweet!) and fried cookies with sesame seeds (I would’ve preferred eating an almond cookie). «Seasonal fruit» was the restaurant’s term for sliced oranges.
Overall, Regency has some good dishes. Some of the other dishes were way out in left field though.

Great service from all the people! There buffet is huge and has lots of items to chose from, there Dim sum is best! Taste great!
They also have hotpot, the soup doesn’t taste as good but they have like TONS of hotpot goodies to put in yum.
Beer for a cheap price? Thats like a bonus!

Dim sum is adequate here. The place is large and can accommodate during busy times. It’s a good choice when other dim sum places are all full.

This review is loooong overdue. I’ve been eating here with family and friends… and their families for years. Dim sum, fondue, buffet — Regency has it all and does it all extremely well.
This large venue also fantastic for meetings as they have several private rooms off the main dining rooms. The stage at the rear is ideal for large functions and the room can be segmented further for smaller functions. Personally, I’ve been here for fundraisers, Christmas parties, and the Sien Lok Society’s Chinese New Year Party (which is by far the most elaborate and extravagant «do» of the new year… not to be missed!).
If I were to pick favorite dishes, I’d say that the Peking duck is always outstanding. They also do a wonderful scallop dish for banquets that I don’t know the name of, but it always makes my eyes light up. It is savory and slightly sweet and oh-​so wonderful.
For dim sum, well, I can’t live without my lotus-​leaf wrapped sticky rice, ha gow and shaomai! It’s so great to have the carts circulating and continuously have food brought to you at will. After years of eating dim sum, the novelty still hasn’t worn off!
The fondue (hot pot) is also such a treat and there is a wonderful selection of meats and vegetables to add to the broth. Don’t even get me started on the buffet… it’s delicious.
All I have to say is come hungry and bring friends… lots of them!

Montréal could learn from the quality of this dim sum palace. It was the best I have had in 20 years. Freshly made; just amazing. Can’t wait to get back there again. Service five star. There were 4 of us on a Friday afternoon after the buffet closed; not a problem; they delivered everything we ordered to our table in good time.

Dim Sum at lunch!!! Ok I might be the last person in the city to discover this but I am pretty excited that I did! They have two options, lunch buffet and of course the amazing carts that go around filled with deliciousness! Steamed pork, steamed shrimp, steamed riced, it is all quite amazing. The great thing is it was super quick. So a quick walk down the street if you are working downtown and want something different for lunch!

Tried the pot stickers, ¾ dough, still gooey on the inside, beef w black Bean shanghai noodles was mostly soy sauce and pretty light on the black bean sauce
2 dishes $ 23 seemed a little steep for lunch

Sigh. It was too good to be true.
When at a banquet not too long ago, I noticed that the quality of the food seemed to have gone a bit downhill. I had heard that the restaurant changed hands, but that shouldn’t have affected standards, or was I being naiive?
At that banquet, well…
— the fish wasn’t properly de-​scaled… having to spit out scales as you’re eating really isn’t all too palatable;
— shrimp dishes were basically overdone. It wasn’t tender, it was tough;
— is there a premium for rice requests?
— I was served the wrong dishes, and even given extra dishes (we tried to alert the resto as we didnt order it, and did not want to be charged for stuff we didn’t even want). But admittedly they redeemed themselves by knocking off the wrong stuff and so on.
These were the big things, but really, in the end, while the rest of the food was ok, it just wasn’t, well great. I might still give it another shot, since I really want to host a chinese banquet meal one more time before Xmas for my friends and I.
Ever since I moved to Calgary, this place has been my fall back position when it came to dim sum and large banquet meals. The food has been good is not legendary, everyone has always enjoyed it, and there was rarely any problems. Now… hmm… hard to say.
I’ve yet to go back for Dim Sum lately, so they might still redeem themselves hopefully.
#UPDATE 5 in Unilocal’s 30-​Day Review Challenge

I’m stuck between a 3 and a 4… but really, I think overall that this place is just good. Like others have said, there is better quality dimsum in Calgary, and in my opinion there are better prices, but here you get the convenience of knowing you will always get a table. So if you’re craving dimsum around the 11am mark, when restaurants are the busiest, this is a safe bet. I’m a sucker for quality of food and service above convenience though so I’ll stick on the 3 side.
The pork shu mai is pretty good here, but other than that I’d say the food is fairly average. Their doughnuts in rice noodle can be really crispy and fresh but also have been pretty soggy before (and that’s my favorite!). Their congee is OK as well, not the best I’ve ever had but not bad by any means.
I hate dimsum places that are lazy and have a buffet too instead of carting or letting you order fresh, so it loses marks there as well.
Service is pretty good, I don’t usually have trouble getting tea refilled here. They aren’t great on the waters but not a big deal!

My family loves dim sum & Regency Palace is our favorite place to go. You can argue that it may not be the best place for dim sum in Calgary but there are definitely some perks:
1. It is HUGE so you can walk in at noon on Saturday with 8 of your closest friends & you’ll still likely get a table with no wait.
2. It has carts and a steam table full of their most popular dim sum items. If the chicken feet have passed for the fifth time & you want something else just go up to the steam table with your ticket and take your dishes back to your table.
Today there were 7 of us and we were stuffed and the bill came out to $ 15 per person including tax and tip. Woot!