| Hong Kong style cuisine in an upscale venue |
Reviewer: Jason
Total Reviews: 1020
Reviewed: 6/15/2007
Rating: 6
My photo gallery
|
Broadway Bistro was suggested by wchane as we were taking him out for his 100th jatbar review. Along with our luncheon was ne00, Jarrod, Terry, and myself. We decided to meet up early to avoid the long lunch lines that plague Broadway Bistro. The restaurant appears to be on the high end of things with dark wood furniture and lcd tvs.
Service was completely off. Menus were tossed on the tables, utensils set to the adjacent table, and even getting our drinks was a site to see. Note to waiters, if Customer 1 orders a Red Bean with Pearls, don't give that drink to customer 2, 3, 4, or 5, it goes to Customer 1.
After seeing one of my favorite meats on the menu, I had to order their oxtail in wine sauce special. I think it costs $12 and comes served with corn chowder?, sweet roll, and dessert. The soup was on the sweet side with a heavy milk/cream. I thoroughly enjoyed it as well as the hawaiian like bread. Both items were fresh.
My dish was the 2nd to arrive at the table and having cooked oxtail a number of times. The meat is tough and normally takes time to cook it to tenderness. You can either do the pressure cooker method or slow cook boil. With that in mind, I wondered how Broadway Bistro would do? Well, the meat wasn't as tender as I'd like. It wasn't exactly falling off the bone and required some chewing. Although the sauce was described as a wine sauce, I thought it was uninspiring in the realm of flavor. Imagine a beef stew with red wine thrown in at the last second with tons of corn starch/rice flour.
I'm already thinking I wouldn't order this dish again and to top things off, I found a piece of hair in my dish halfway through the meal. It wasn't curly or shiny so I placed it to the side and kept eating a tiny bit more. I thought about it a couple of spoonfuls later and stopped eating. I've had enough. The lingering hair in my meal put a damper of things. My score is a 6.
It's probably an isolated case but I gotta call it like I saw it. Their menu is huge so I'm sure there are much better things to order. Prices are a bit more expensive than the others in the area.
Wallace's 100th lunch is exactly the congrats we'd like to send him but we figure good company and a free meal gotta count for something. Congratulations to writing 100+ reviews and we hope to read more.
|
| |
Reviewer: Terry
Total Reviews: 738
Reviewed: 6/15/2007
Rating: 7.5
My photo gallery
|
Today we were celebrating the 100th review of wchane - and it was quite nice to find a new location to review so close to work. It seems we picked off all the close fruit, so when new fruit emerges, its always cool for me.
Broadway Bistro, to me, is like a high end Top Cafe. You got all of the Hong Kong favorites here, but with a higher quality restauarant, and of course higher prices.
I went with my standard Seafood over baked rice. To Broadway Bistro, this is more of a fried fish over rice, instead of the usual seafood cornucopia. It had the usual cream and cheese melted on top. And it was a whopping $9.50. Ouch.
The dish was good, I won't lie. It wasn't as rich as Top Cafe's since it was just the one fish in there, but there definitely was enough richness in there with the cream and the cheese - for sure. It didn't overly fill me up, and so I felt a little shortchanged after paying the high price. If the price was lower, or the seafood more varied and plentiful I would have bumped up my score. As it was, I felt like I paid too much for what I got. And this food didn't really blow me away.
Its tough for me to decide if i will return or not. While I was there, I kept looking out the window at Top Cafe across the street and the tasty,cheaper, goods over there.
|
| |
|
|
Reviewer: ne00
Total Reviews: 176
Reviewed: 6/15/2007
Rating: 7
My photo gallery |
This is my third visit to Broadway Bistro. The previous two times were at their original Millbrae location and this is my first to the Cupertino location. Before Jason even suggested this place I had no idea it was located within the same plaza as Happy Donuts.
This is your typical Hong Kong style café food. There are a lot of entrée selections but I stuck with my basic baked rice dish. So far I’ve only had their baked pork chop with smothered gravy and cheese item as well as the bakes seafood with smothered cream sauce item. Their rice under their baked dish is not white, but rather some sort of egg fried rice type. The entire dish is great if you have enough gravy, once the gravy runs out the dish is dry and boring.
Broadway bistro offers many selections of drinks. There are the flavored milk drinks, and other Hong Kong style drinks. The Millbrae location has more drink options and actually I prefer the drinks there to the ones in Cupertino.
They offer a lunch special that includes soup, bread, entrée, and dessert. I would have opted for this but did not want to take a risk on the dessert. I stuck with my bread and butter order of the baked pork chop over rice (with choice of noodles as well). During the ordering process, there was some communication problem between our waiter and us.
Finally when the food and drinks arrived, it was obvious the waiter had no clue who ordered what and just dropped of the drinks and plates on the table for us to distribute ourselves. At one point an attempt was made but drinks and entrees were served to the wrong people, such as the pork chop over rice was given to Terry.
I think there might be some growing pains at this location. They are located directly across from Top Café. If they want to compete in Cupertino, they need to compete with Top Café and open late. I prefer the Millbrae location on communication, drinks offers, and speed over the Cupertino location. The bakes items took the longest. Water refill was non existent.
The dessert turned out to be a scoop of ice cream with four choices of flavors. I would probably have gone with the special if I had known in advance the dessert item. I would come back to try some other items.
|
| |
Reviewer: wchane
Total Reviews: 147
Reviewed: 6/19/2007
Rating: 7
My photo gallery |
Terry hit the nail on the head with the 'high-end top cafe' remark.
I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but its bright orange and green signs with a crowd of people outside everyday during lunch had my intrigued. We arrived at 11:45 and beat the crowds, I ended up ordering fish & veggies over rice along with a hong kong milk tea.
Our waiter was extremely confused, delivering dishes to wrong people and insisting that I ordered a lemon paste drink. After all the confusion was sorted out I got into the food. The fish and vegtables were fresh and served over a good amount of rice. However there was nothing I found special about it, and actually on the blander side of the palate. I believe it was $9.50. Family Delight Cafe in Milpitas serves this same dish for $5.99 and in my opinion tastes better. Then again that drive to milpitas costs $4 in gas.
Unless something drastic changes, I'll cross the street for Top.
|
| |
|
|
| Disclaimer |
|
|
