After many years of taunting Eddie for his restaurant picks, he comes out of retirement to bring us to one of his favorite restaurants, Top Cafe. Never heard of this place, never been, I can only imagine it's going to be a non-chain restaurant filled with asian people. We hit Top Cafe during the lunch rush and grabbed the last table. It's a small restaurant seating 26 people with cramp seating.
Since Eddie is a regular here, I had him do the honors with the ordering. He ordered me a lightly battered chicken thigh with mushroom garlic sauce and shared salt and pepper fish.
The chicken thigh was either deep fried or baked. It wasn't too oily but thigh meat had plenty of fat. The chicken was juicy and a big serving. The mushroom sauce was completely engulfed with chopped garlic. Considering all the stinking garlic bits mixed in the sauce, it didn't overwhelm the mushroom flavor. Off to the side were steamed veggies and a scoop of white rice. I would order this again but would love to see if they have this dish using pork chops. I'd rate this dish an 8.
The clear winner for lunch was the Salt and Pepper Fish. The crispy batter was on the salty side but the fish was cooked perfectly. The fish tasted fresh and didn't have a gamey taste to it. I'm not sure how much it cost but it's a definite order and give it a 9.
Eddie pulled through with lunch. My big plate of chicken was $5.95 and would guess the fish cost $8? Top Cafe was clean and gets bonus points for staying open until 3AM everyday. It's a perfect destination for late night dining in the valley. Everything tasted authentic and service was fast. Parking can be tough in the shopping center but we heard they have plenty of parking in the Cisco parking lot across the street.
Reviewer: Terry
Total Reviews: 724
Reviewed: 8/25/2006
Rating: 9
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Wow. Top Cafe totally impressed me. Recommended by Agent Eddie, I was a bit unsure at first (this is a long running Jatbar joke). We arrive at noon and the place is packed (a good sign). We are eventually shown a table and sit down to scan the menu. While the standard chinese fare is present and accounted for, there are also many dishes with a euro-slant to them (as you can see by the pictures). Interesting. Eddie mentions that this place is for cheap, fast lunches, and looking at the wide variety on the menu, one gets the diner feeling about this place.
I go with the Baked Seafood over rice. I was expecting something along the lines of King Wah, where I had a big bed of rice and some seafood with sauce layered over it. I also ordered a coke ice cream float just to see what it looked like. Eddie made fun of me because it was a kids drink. Well.... I won't argue about that.
My dish arrived and it looks interesting. Its served in a super (!!) hot casserole dish with rice on the bottom, covered by the seafood and white sauce, and melted cheese on top of that. Everyone commented how not healthy it looked. hehe.
The ice cream and coke was, well, ice cream and coke, but there was ice under the ice cream which (to me) seemed odd.
Back to the dish. I waited a few minutes for it to cool down. Eddie also ordered a dish of spicy fried fish for us to share. I dug into a piece of that. It had a lot of jalapeno peppers in the dish, but they were easy to pick off if necessary. I did not. Wow, this was really salty, but oh so good.
My dish finally cooled down enough to dig into it. Amazing. The sauce was really decadent and there was not too much seafood in it that i didn't like. The mixture was heavenly. There is something about the melted cheese, white sauce, and seafood that seems, well.... calorie laden. I polished off this dish with no problems.
I must admit that I returned the next day with my wife and family. We ordered the spicy fried fish again, and I had my baked seafood. My wife went with the pork chop over rice (it was served the same way as my seafood, but brown sauce instead of white sauce), and my sons shared potstickers and chow fun. Everyone enjoyed their food. My 2 year old ate nearly all the chow fun, my oldest son nearly all the potstickers. My wife enjoyed the pork chop over rice, and really liked the spicy fried fish. She even dug into the baked seafood and gave that a try. A winner.
The thing to take note of here, though, is that they only take cash. Prices are cheap enough ($6-7 a dish) that its not a problem, but do keep that in mind. They have sodas (though on my 2nd visit they had no regular coke, just diet coke), and beers.
I must say I was a bit held back when I first saw this place. I mean I didn't REALLY expect good food to come out of this place, but I guess this is one of those cases where you can't judge a book by its cover. My friend and I got here a little before 11 AM, so breakfast was available, my friend and I opted to not get lunch though. There weren't a lot of people here so the atmosphere was pretty low-key.
My friend opted to get the baked seafood ($7.95) and I got the baked eel with minced meat over rice ($7.95). Along with those I ordered some green onion pancakes ($3.50). The fried Chinese doughnuts ($1.50) here are pretty good too, and you get a good amount for not a lot of money.
The first thing to come out were our soups. They were tomato based soups with little bits of vegetables here and there. My friend and I said it was comparable to hot V-8 with an oil slick on top. It wasn't bad it just wasn't spectacular either. I'm sure on a cold day this soup would be very nice.
The next thing to come out were the green onion pancakes. The thickness of these were a little bit more than that of a crepes and they were good, but were overly hot coming to our table. I noticed my friend's dish was about to come out, but it was sitting around for about a minute before the waitress brought it out. It was a good thing too because even after all that time, another dish would have been lukewarm, but this thing came out still bubbling. Then my dish came out and it too was served bubbling in a casserole dish. I tried a bit of my friend's baked seafood and it was very rich, while my dish wasn't as rich but I would say I had a little bit more flavor. The eel was plentiful too, but not as plentiful as the seafood in my friend's dish.
Our bill came out to $21 flat, but we left happy and satisfied. Unfortunately after the meal my friend began experiencing symptoms of the Itis (fatigue, drowsiness, etc.) probably because of how rich his meal was.
