A 31-year-old Chinese restaurant and Legacy Business in the Portola neighborhood will close at the end of the year. Imperial Garden Seafood Restaurant, known to its community as 德群 or duk kwan, announced (opens in new tab) on Instagram in September that its final day of service will be Dec. 31. Owner Elaine Yen tells The Standard it was a difficult decision for her family, including her father, Phong Yen, who opened the restaurant with her late mother, Elin Yen, in 1995. It’s also the right one.
“My parents’ American dream was to make sure their children are out of trouble, have a direction in their life,” Yen says. “They made a business so we had somewhere to go. It complemented what the neighborhood needed.”
The property was sold in February, and though there were a few years left on the lease, the new owners gave Yen the option to exit early, as there is no long-term plan for a restaurant there. Yen stresses that the restaurant was not kicked out and did not experience any friction with the new owners. Instead, she says, factors in the decision included a neighborhood that’s eating out less and a lack of parking.
Imperial Garden has been a hit since its early days, selling takeout orders of chicken feet and swan-shaped durian puffs. It houses Menny Ly’s Sassy Foods (opens in new tab), the city’s first and only vegan dim sum business, which Ly says will relocate, likely to the East Bay. The two women have been friends since childhood, when they’d both push shopping carts down the aisles of the original San Bruno Market, which Yen’s family also owned. Ly joined Yen in running the family restaurant in 2023. Together, they brought a robust suite of vegan options to the restaurant, including baked mochi buns, pear-shaped glutinous fried dumplings, and Impossible beef noodle rolls…