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| - Asian Cafe Express shares the same Chinese name as the Cafe de Coral in Hong Kong, and boasts itself as "Arizona's 1st Hong Kong style cafe serving authentic Chinese, Southeast Asia & Western influenced dishes". Over 300 dishes are found on the menu, ranging from the classic Hong Kong style baked pork chop rice to the Americanized sweet and sour pork. Even Hawaiian roast pork appears on the menu. Despite offering a wide selection of Chinese dishes, Asian Cafe Express lacks the "outstanding factor" since it is a "jack of all trades, master of none" restaurant. This type of restaurant serves nearly everything in an ordinary fashion and neglects to specialize in any particular dish.
I came to Asian Cafe Express for a weekday lunch and the restaurant was packed. Most of the guests were eating ACE's $3.98 special bowl, a one-item Americanized rice bowl (kung pao chicken, teriyaki chicken, sweet and sour pork, etc.). I summoned the Cantonese waiter and ordered a baked pork chop rice. He told me I would have to wait 45 minutes to 1 hour for this dish. LOL, who has that long to eat lunch? In nearly all HK cafes that I have been to, only 10 to 15 minutes is required to deliver this dish to my table even when the kitchen is busy. All the ingredients are generally pre-processed such that the rice just needs to be stir-fried and the ingredients just needs to be baked to melt the cheese before the baked pork chop rice is served. Unfortunately, this preparation is absent at ACE, likely due to its low demand. A 60 minute estimate suggests that the pork chops had not been cut and fried, the vegetables have not been diced, and/or the rice has not been stir-fried or cooked. Basically the dish is cooked from scratch.
Alternatively, I ordered the Fresh Tomatoes with Two Eggs and Beef since it was guaranteed to be out instantly. It arrived in 20 minutes. This rice plate is considered as a basic and classic HK over-rice dish. It was acceptable, the egg was fried crispy on the corners yet not burnt, an attribute that even some HK cafes in Southern California neglect. The tomatoes gravy was not as salty as I expected and beef were tender and cooked properly. However, my biggest concern was the rice that was used. The rice texture was poor. It resembled a very loose rice pilaf rather than Jasmine rice. Rice pilaf is highly uncharacteristic of what is served at a traditional Hong Kong style cafe.
To complement the rice dish, I also ordered the daily soup - a carrot and Chinese vegetable soup. It was probably the best Cantonese old-fire soup available in Arizona. Unfortunately, the soup was very oily and contained a lot of MSG. It definitely does not pass the home-style quality test.
Finally, I ordered the HK style coffee with milk tea (yin-yeung), to complete the HK-cafe experience. The young waiter informed me that it would take over 30 minutes to prepare, because he had to boil the water and then steep the tea. I received the drink in a soup cup (LOL). I could tell that milk tea and hot beverages are not ordered often enough for the restaurant to order mugs. The yin yeung was prepared with the HK-style procedure, mixing coffee and milk tea in equal proportions, but the milk tea was prepared in an odd way (red tea was mixed with a dash of 2% milk). Overall, the taste was acceptable for Arizona standards. At least better than some places in LA, which give you 75% coffee, 25% English tea, and condensed milk.
Asian Cafe Express offers authentic Cantonese dishes on their menu but I think some of the proper ingredients are lacking in Arizona, so the dishes cannot be prepared with the same standard as those found in Hong Kong or even Los Angeles. In Arizona, ACE is considered one of the best HK-style restaurants, but in LA, the restaurant would not survive for more than 6 months.
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