We had an excellent lunch here prior to heading to the Lantern Festival. Our party of 9 were seated at the high top tables in the poke bar side of the establishment. My friends Nicole (Nikki) and Mike are regulars at Simi's Cafe and have always raved about their delicious food and excellent service. We were just in town for the weekend so they made sure we got to sample what they love so much about it.
We started off with tsukemono which is Japanese style pickled vegetables. I liked it all except the seaweed looking plant. That didnt taste good in this otherwise great starter. Some of our party got poke bowls and they are huge. My good friend Nikki gets these poke bowl's from Simi's a few times a week. She is a super regular. Ha! The fish looked fresh, the portions are huge and the toppings options were plentiful.
On to the other food. We had filet mignon in XO sauce and that was very tasty & tender. It's served with string beans, bell peppers and onions. Good flavor. We also got their house special fried rice and that comes with amongst other things bbq pork, chicken and shrimp. It was a good fried rice dish and the portion was generous. Others in our party also got pho as their main entree. My niece is a vegetarian so the tofu in their vegetable pho is perfect. We also got the roasted prawns and crab legs in a chili sauce. Wow... This dish is huge and can feed a whole army. Great flavor and good spice to it as well. We also got a sushi crunch roll that was topped with crab and eel sauce. I dont know the exact name of it but we ordered another one for the table. It was good.
What I enjoyed most with the food we had was something special Albert the owner cooked up for us visitors from LA. He had cooked duck breast with fried rice and a sweet sauce. It was delicious. I even saw Albert use a torch to caremelize the skin of the duck. It was great. The duck was tender, had lots of flavor and I just simply couldnt get enough of it.
The customer service was excellent. Albert and his family (staff) were so attentive. I really cant say enough of how nice they treat their customers. I see now why my friends are such regulars there. Great food and even better customer service.