Cathay Imperial

I'll start with the fact that I am a little bias bc this place has been around since I was born, and my family has gone to it casually over the years. The inside of this place is absolutely made for a movie. That's why I asked my boyfriend if we could stop here on our way in from California. I didn't know honestly if the food was going to be good or not because I didn't remember how it was the last time I had been here, luckily for us the food was better than expected. We got egg foo young and split it - and it was more than enough food for both of us. The food was excellent. I know that you kind of need to have an idea of what you want before you go here... So let me give you a few ideas...Egg foo young, mapo tofu, any vegetable, steamed rice, and anything with eggplant.

Only been once and got takeout. Was some of the best Chinese I've had in the area. Will definitely be back.

The food was good worth going back. Service was great and friendly atmosphere was nice.

This is our favorite Chinese restaurant. They have one unique dish, Shrimp and Bacon Cantonese, and have good Mai Tais, egg rolls, Egg Foo Young, Shrimp with Eggplant, and Mandarin Chicken, as well as a good variety of other dishes.

The best Chinese food in metairie. I love the hi hops appetizer. Their egg rolls are perfect and every entree I have tried has been delicious.

Service and good are always great! Christy remembers everyone! Our favorite dish is the sesame chicken

It had been a long time since I had come to Cathay Imperial so I decided to give it another try. I am glad I did. The food is really good, especially the egg rolls, boneless chicken and hot and sour soup. I have already gotten the soup and egg rolls several times as takeout since my visit. I look forward to trying other things!

This ain't it.. I was charged around 18 dollars for this . There are literally 8 shrimp, and this small portion of rice. I was assured that this would be the better way to go if I wanted more food than the combination plate.. really? Doesn't seem like it. All together I spent 30 something cause I also had a crab Rangoon, and a coke. I haven't been here in forever, and was roll it really went down hill. They def have , the entree tastes pretty ok though, just wth with the portion size? That's ridiculous ..prob won't be back .

The food is decent, BUT yesterday I ordered 3 plates to be picked up. I ordered at 3pm The total came to $80+. It was a to go order and they expected a tip! (for whose service?) It was a to go order and there was no service. What a ripoff!

Nice place but good too bland for my taste. But that being said my parents love it. To each his own

Total old school 1980's Chinese joint in a strip mall. Maybe it's quintessential Chinese American Kitsch- but their food is comfort Chinese food perfection. They might use msg & I might not care. Nola is lackluster in classic Chinese restaurants, this is what I have been looking for & was so glad to have found.

Really good for a quick dinner! I have been eating here for several years. Mandarin chicken is a go to for me! The mandarin gravy is excellent. I also tried the hot and sour soup for the first time today and absolutely loved it. Best hot and sour soup around. The fried rice here is just ok. Definitely prefer the rice at other places but the other parts of the meal make up for it. It is a little pricey compared to other Chinese restaurants around here when you take into consideration the portion sizes, but is still a decent price for the combination dinner plates.

Always love this old school Chinese restaurant. Absolutely wonderful mandarin chicken and egg rolls. Yummy hot sour soup. Everyone is always friendly.

Great food! Good service. Decorated like a traditional chinese restaurant. They have a ham fried rice and chop suey thats to die for!

Cathay Imperial is our favorite Chinese restaurant and has been for over 30 years. The service and the food are very good. They are the only place I have found Shrimp and Bacon Cantonese. Other favorites include their egg rolls, Mai Tais, Mandarin Chicken, Shrimp and Eggplant (a little spicy), Crab Rangoon, and Shrimp Toast. They have lunch specials that are a bargain but the quantities are unusually smaller than dinner. For example, the lunch portion of egg foo young is one patty and the dinner size is three patties.

Wonderful decor. I hadn't been there for a long time. Service was very friendly and good. GF's Pina Colada was good. Crab Rangoon appetizer was perfect. General's Chicken was lighter than usual Chinese restaurant offerings, very tasty but not cloyingly sweet. Singapore Noodles had the perfect flavor and spice.

Came for lunch with my girls. Very reasonably priced. We all got lunch combos that came with fried rice and egg rolls. General chicken, beef with broccoli and Lo mein. My daughters said they really liked the fried rice. It had a good texture, not too hard like some places. Also got crab rangoons and fried wontons. We would def come back and try some other menu items.

I eat Chinese food on a regular basis. Not long ago I stopped in to Cathay Inn for lunch. I was pleasantly surprised that had a large selection of lunch specials at reasonable prices. I was very pleased with quality and taste of my lunch. The next night I placed a large to go order for my wife and a few friends. Everyone thought the food was very good and not the usual "cookie cutter" chinese you get from most Chinese restaurants. Last week my wife and I dined in. The atmosphere and decor of the restaurant combined with very good food makes it a very nice dining experience. She was impressed. I can recommend Cathay Inn for good Chinese food without breaking your budget.

Great food! Dine in or take out, Ive been coming her for years and it's still AWESOME!!!! The BEST egg rolls in town not to mention their own signature sweet and sour sauce! Daily lunch specials too

We dined here regularly after Hurricane Katrina and moving to Metairie from Uptown. Very good service, and the authentic. The place was never packed during the week and always a complete menu. Could dine leisurely in a laid back traditional environment.

I have been coming to Cathay Inn since the early 1990's, it has ALWAYS been my Chinese restaurant to go-to. Even when I moved to the northshore, I would make the 45-minute or so drive to order takeout from there. Eventually I became good friends with the original owner and when he saw me he use to give me a box load of fortune cookies! Then the restaurant was sold and new owners took over. First thing, menu prices were increased and the dinning room was updated. Food was still great, although the Vietnamese cook was no longer working there but still worth it nonetheless. Wait staff is ok. Its bit of a hit or miss of who waits on you, really. Some of them are great but some are very rushed and aloof. Overall I've never had a truly unpleasant experience with this Chinese restaurant, but I do miss old Mr. Jost who originally owned it.

Have been here several times now and really do enjoy the food. Don't know how long this place has been here, but looking at the decor, it has been here for some time. The place is clean and very friendly and helpful waitresses. The Moi Good Gai Pan is my favorite. Always hot and full of vegetables. The sauce is great. They do have lunch and dinner combo specials the include egg rolls and fried rice. The food is always quick and tasty. You won't be disappointed.

My go to for Chinese! Consistent food and service they are always good. I recommend them to friends and family as well. Love this place.

Awesome place! Super old school charm. My grandparents took me to a similar place when I was younger. There dinner for two and volcano for two make a great date night!

Has to be the worst Chinese food I've ever eaten. The fried rice was red and not tasty at all. Plus it was way over priced.

When you grow up in the 504 and move away there are things that you initially miss and people around the country ask about- po-boys, gumbo, beignets, all that. But then you go out for Chinese and come up super disappointed. It turns out New Orleans Chinese is different from Chinese elsewhere (of course!). I love stopping by Cathay whenever I visit home to get some proper Mandarin Chicken and egg rolls that are superior to any I've had elsewhere. I've never been to China. I don't know if this is authentic. But I do know that this is the Chinese food that I grew up eating and I love it!

I've been here 3 times an it's very good!The price is good not over priced!! The food has a very fresh taste an not greasy!!! Great service ask for Anna she very friendly an can recommend alot of good stuff to choose from.

We were craving Chinese for lunch. Since I had to go to Sam's on Airline I thought we would try Cathay Inn out since it was close. We ordered takeout. My husband got the general's chicken combo plate, my 8 year old ordered the general's chicken with no sauce, and I got the hot garlic chicken. I'm pretty impressed! Food, including the veggies in my hot garlic chicken, is very fresh. Sauce has a nice flavor. Rice also very good. Egg roll is good too, although not my very favorite. Also, it was very reasonably priced at $30 total. Interior was clean which was a plus. This may be our new Chinese takeout joint!

First time customer: was very clean waitress could not understand the conversations so older member came by to help out. The only compliant is: Cathay did not have cloth napkins. Very tasty food. They cook to your taste!!!!

good food & service! best egg foo young!

Don't expect an apology or offered a replacement if your food arrives to the table not as described, (last and final visit). On a previous visit the waitress, (the one with the long hair) brought my food to the table and I did not see her again. Had to hunt her down in the back area where she was preoccupied with her cell phone. It's shame because this place used to be good! I will not be going back.

The food was delicious and the people working there are nice. The only issue I had that I assumed that white rice would come with my dinner but it brown rice. So ask them before you order.nice and quite Resturant very clean . Would definitely come back

My husband and I have been customers of Cathay Inn for 20+ years. Their food has always been consistently good and the prices are reasonable. On Thursday January 3 (2019), we ordered food to go. While the prices were still reasonable, we were very disappointed in the food quality. We ordered moo goo gai pan, boneless chicken and pork with fried chicken szechuan. All three dishes were very bland and lacked flavor. The fried rice was basically white rice with a splash of some kind of flavorless reddish/orange sauce. The egg rolls weren't bad but they tasted like the frozen egg rolls you can buy in a grocery store. It made us wish we would have gotten something from McDonald's where you know what to expect.

Great tasty food and friendly good service. Egg fu yung is the best I've had. Easy parking and they do a great take=out business. Very pleasant décor. Clean too.

Food was great, love decor. And reasonable price , we love mandarin chicken as well, we also ordered chicken fried rice it's ok but not great.

This place has been here forever. It's what most New Orleanians consider a "Chinese Restaurant ". All the traditional dishes. Mandarin chicken, MooGolGaiPan, green pepper steak, etc. the food is true to expectations, so you probably already know what to order when you go in. The soups are good, egg rolls and fried wontons, too. It's the Asian comfort food we've known so ,one. My wife and I ate there on a Saturday evening. We each had a combination plate. I had mandarin chicken, she had The General's chicken. Both came with egg roll and shrimp fried rice. She had water, I had a coke and also a cup of hot and sour soup. Our bill before tip was $20.00. That's amazing for 2018.

Cathay is a restaurant that I've go to many times over the years. The food is a solid "B" or better. Service is slow and poor... "D." Waitress forgot items and was not correct on the order.

This place is located in strip mall on Airline but they do have some nice Chinese exterior architectural elements to set it apart. The service has always been decent here and the food is generally good. You typically get good value for your money here as the portions are large. This is probably the best Chinese restaurant on all of Airline.

I quit going there food quality was not the same as when we went to there . The server was very snippy.

My favorite Chinese takeout. They have a great sweet and sour chicken and General shrimp.

I don't know why this place has negative reviews. I've never been in here before and everything up ordered is good, but to each their own.

This is our go to Chinese restaurant. We always order take out and have been very pleased. Egg drop soup is my favorite. Kids love the sweet and sour chicken. We have not dined in before, but seems like a nice atmosphere to eat.

Poorly cooked, poorly seasoned, barely cooked cornstarch flavor to the sauces, this place is just sad. Don't waste your money.

Food was ok but I have had a lot better. Another table had a child running around and screaming numerous times. When I mentioned this to the waitress it really didn't phase her. I also asked for a take out box and small container for white rice. She brought one box and no container. She obviously wanted me stuff and mix everything together. We won't be going back ever again.

It's amazing how my restaurant experiences tend to run so differently than other people's on here. I can't speak for the place pre-renovations. But my experience was really quite nice. Walking in, you can tell they spent a lot making it look like it's not part of a strip mall (Which it is). There is a very pleasant smell of cooking food that reminds me of walking into a great bbq place in Texas that's been known for their food for decades. There is a wonderful balance to the smell that really shoves me back into good memories of working in a Chinese restaurant back in the day. I went for lunch. I happened to be in the area and figured I'd give it a try. It wasabout half full at the time. Not bad since it's a nice sized space. The wait-staff were ...hrm....not rude, but brusk. Polite, but gave the distinct impression that they were busy so don't bug them unless it was important. My waitress was actually rather friendly toward me. She even complimented my on my "pretty" hair (Guess I need that haircut after all). She did make sure my drink wasn't empty and brought me chili paste and chop sticks with a smile. I ordered my old stand-by, Mongolian Beef. Most places think it involves adding carrots, mushrooms, water chestnuts etc..NO...Onions, beef and yum is all you need for good Mongolian Beef. Period. They not only got it right, they got the rice beautifully prepared. If was shrimp fried rice and unlike so many places, you could have eaten just that and felt like you had a nice meal. The eggroll was large and really tasty. I made the mistake of getting the bbq rib appetizer and while it was a BIT too sweet for me, the plate was almost large enough to be an entire meal. The meal itself, for being lunch and cheap, was really too much for me...and I'm a fatty. All in all, it was one of the better Chinese experiences I've had lately. Check out the place if you can. Just don't order an app and lunch... As a matter of fact, just go in and order several appetizers and check it out for yourself.

Place looks a little out dated, but the food is delicious and the prices are reasonable.

The food is not all that bad - I just like going there because it is convenient for me. The atmosphere so so - a whole in the wall - old and run down - usually never crowded. For the convenience - it's good enough to just grab a dish and a beer and then be on your way fairly quickly. The staff are not the friendliest of friendly people. I ordered the vegetable delight comes with steam rice, my favorite..... They have good egg rolls as well... They do have a limited bar/area - not to bad if they can serve me a beet with my dinner - I'm good! Try not to ask too many questions in general, it appears they don't care to answer the questions much less talk to customers. And if you take too long to order - the wait staff will simply just walk off for a spell. Like I said - no the friendliest of people.....

4-star for food quality, 3-star for service and 2-star for ambiance/atmosphere. I just wish the place was a little cleaner. My eyes roam around and it just doesn't seem clean enough to me; although I do eat there a couple times a month. The mandarin chicken is great. The chicken lettuce wraps are fantastic. Unfortunately, I do not think they wash the lettuce before serving. The only reason I say that is it appears like they just cut a head of lettuce in half, because the leaves are still stuck together. I've never asked though. If you don't specify all white meat, they will mix in dark meat. I believe it is $1.00 extra. I am not a shrimp eater, but the shrimp that they use in their shrimp fried rice and egg rolls are not good quality; and I do not believe they are deveined. They are very tiny. They almost look like those little dried shrimp you buy near the checkouts at the local grocery stores. The egg rolls and won tons are good, although I usually pick out those little shrimp from the egg rolls. I also do not like how they put their sauces (sweet & sour, etc. ) in those squeeze bottles that get all dirty and sticky from people using them. Yucky! Put them in little cups on the side! They are actually good sauces though. The service is sort of iffy. Usually decent, but sometimes a little uncaring. Definitely a fail that their soft drinks are served in cans. They only have the pink sweetener on the tables. Not sure if they have Equal or Splenda by request. Also, I don't care for TV's in restaurants, but that's just my preference. They normally have Top 40 music playing at a low volume with two TV's on mute. Prices are reasonable.

Yea, I am a huge fan! I have been eating here for the past 30 years! I've relocated 18 yrs ago, but our family has to go back and eat here every time we visit. Not much has changed over the years. My favorite dish is the Sizzlin Wor Bar. Other favorites are the Phoenix Chicken and the Mandarin Chicken. Love their sweet and sour sauce, so I always have to have an egg roll! The service is very slow. I've learned to order as soon as the waitress comes to the table and ask for the check the minute the food arrives. I think you really learn to appreciate the Chinese food in Louisiana after you move to other states, it's just so much better in the south!

The drinks are pretty strong, the staff can be pretty rude but usually just rather flat, same with the food, usually acceptable but can be down right disgusting. Every time I go it's a mix of at least two of the negatives. Last week I got #52 which was sliced BBQ pork and veggies that was decent. My wife on the other hand got the Singapore noodles with chicken that was straight from the microwave chewy and tasted nothing like the rest of the dish, which makes me believe they prepare the meats separate, set aside and warm it up to add to various dishes. I asked for to go container for my leftovers, she brought two. When we brought the issue up she told us that's how the chicken in Singapore noodles is supposed to be. After a few more rude exchanges we decided to ask that dish to be taken off our ticket to which she replied we should just take it with us.‍‍‍