Word is that Empress Harbor Seafood, one of the most popular banquet venues in the San Gabriel Valley, closed its doors a week ago, leaving people with planned banquets in the lurch. The space on Atlantic and Garvey opened up over 30 years ago as home of Harbor Village Seafood, the most upscale Chinese seafood restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley, with its parent based in Hong Kong and its sister restaurant in San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center. Around 2000 the operation was taken over by the operators of Gardena’s Sea Empress Restaurant and rechristened Empress Harbor. Recent visits to banquets at Sea Empress showed the premises becoming shopworn, though they seemed to have a lot of bookings. I’m wondering if Millennials holding wedding festivities at alternative venues cut into their market.
ocean star still arund?
Which makes me wonder where the executive chefs from that shuttered Harbor Village went after that, and whether Embassy Kitchen’s Merlin was one of them or affiliated somehow.