Cafe VIP Junior

We went here to grab some lunch in the afternoon (after 1pm). Overall, it was an alright experience. We were seated right away. The waitress was pleasant and took our order right away.
We ordered the specials (fish and corn over spaghetti and steak and rice). I think they forgot our orders because it took a very long time for the food to come. We did heard a conversation from the waitress that nothing from our table had been served. As we weren’t in a hurry, we didn’t rush the waitress but glad that she realized that food hadn’t been served at our table.
We got our food and overall it tasted pretty good. All of the food came. However, two other tables mentioned either that their food hadn’t arrive or they need to take the food to-​go because they had already finished their food.
We got our checks pretty quick as the crowd had already left when we finished.

This place needs to learn how to spell. Their menu is pretty limited and the food is pretty subpar.

If I have choice to give zero star, I probably would do that. This is the worst HK style café that I have ever been to. My husband and I passed by and thought this might be the second restaurant of VIP in Chinatown which has pretty decent food and authentic HK style milk tea. So, we gave a try. The milk tea was not even HK style milk tea, it’s more taste like from Lipton tea bag. I ordered a french toast from the afternoon tea menu which normally has peanut butter inside (HK style), surprisingly, it’s just like American french toast. With the price they charge, I expect something better, not to mention the extremely small cup of milk tea. So don’t get ripped because of the store name, I would suggest Café Orchid if you expect a real HK Style Café in that area.

After an interview at the airport, I came here for a bite to eat before driving back to Mr. Face in Fremont. I wasn’t planning to come here initially, but the Vietnamese place next door was closed when it wasn’t supposed to be that day. Utter disappointment to have no sign of life and no indication as to why it was closed at such a time!
I was the only one coming in and it looked to be like a mother and her son working the front. It was very quiet and after looking at the menu, I decided to just go with the rice noodle soup with chicken wings and a fried egg. Initially I thought the noodles were going to be like phở, but they were more like vermicelli… the chicken wings were akin to the Tyson ones you get in the freezer isle.
The food wasn’t the tastiest… If it weren’t for the wings, the dish would have been rather bland. For the price, though, this was a decent deal.

newly opened. cheap eats (nothing over $ 15) a little small on the portions but since I can’t eat much, it’s perfect for me. it’s more like hong kong style café with the same small portions, but pretty good for what it is.
Last time I had fried chicken wings with potato salad which was ok. Potato’s were still on the hard side.
the special of the day was a curry fish fillet which was mediocre only cause it was cold and their beef tongue with tomato sauce was probably the thing i liked most that day.

My wife and I were looking for a different spot to eat and she found this place. It was new so we gave it a try. The place is small but nice and the staff if very friendly and persistant. I ordered some pork chop, onions with spagetti noodles. It was very delicious and it’s something I would order again. My wife order same type of dish but with fish which was also very good. Not pricey at all, we will be eating here again.

I went here with my family for the first time on Saturday around 2:45. It’s small inside, but very clean, and the servers were polite. Food portions were small and flavor generic. Prices definitely more expensive that one «$» sign. I had planned to order from the afternoon tea special menu, but the choices were not that good/​cheap, and only included tea or coffee– no milk tea upgrade option
We ordered:
Cream of corn soup– it was exactly like reheated Campbell soup
Spicy chicken wings w/​potato salad: tasted ok but it was so spicy we couldn’t eat it without scrapping off the sauce
Thai curry chicken with rice: watery/​clear sauce, had NO curry flavor!
Baked tomato prawn over rice: described as «baked» in menu but it was served loose on plate and was never baked; did not taste good, very generic tomato sauce, shrimp was mushy with tails/​shells on
Baked meat sauce spaghetti: pretty good
HK milk tea: pretty good. Not too sweet, had nice tea flavor. But it was a really small cup and they charged $.30 extra for sweet condensed milk (really? for just half a teaspoon’s worth?)
Menu choice was small compared to other HK style cafes in Millbrae. Prices not worth the small portion sizes and generic food. Food took long time too arrive.

Not bad. I love Hong Kong style cafes, and this one is definitely similar to VIP in Chinatown, SF. My mom and I ordered the baked pork chop over rice and happy hour fried chicken wings.
Bake pork chop over rice — Hot and steamy. Pork chop was pretty tender, but the rice was a bit mushy. Unfortunate, since this is a staple food for this kind of place
Fried Chicken Wings — $ 5 for 3 pieces… BUT the entire chicken wing, not just the joint. Came with a side of potato salad and a drink of choice (coffee or milk tea). The wings were juicy and succulent; one of my faves!
Definitely going to give this place another shot. They have daily specials for $ 6.95 (what a steal!).

My friend and I was planning on going to Ben Tre next door, but they’ve been running on some funny hours at their Millbrae location, so needless to say, they were closed. Since we were already there, we decided to try Café VIP Junior. The menu looked interesting. So we ended up ordering the Café VIP Junior macaroni soup, cheese and meat sauce spaghetti, and beef curry and rice. The macaroni soup was not what I had expected. It was a bunch of macaroni elbows in (chicken) broth, with one or two pees, 1 single turkey sausage, a sliced ham, with one fried egg. It looked like crap and tasted like crap. The cheese and meat sauce spaghetti was good and the beef curry and rice was not bad. All-​in-​all, a decent meal. One thing that got me was they do not do family-​style. All the serving sizes are perfect for one person. Would I come back… I don’t know. They only had one person serving, so serve time was a bit slow.

discrete millbrae location… inner one-​way el camino side street establishment… parking difficult at times… unassuming restaurant inside a bar in former life… find the address and sign… enter and finding well lighted hong kong restaurant inside… large bar to the right taking third of the restaurant space… not much investment in remodeling… tables scattered around with plastic covers, paper place mats, and fork & knife wrapped in paper napkins… simple offering and service with thick dialect… unable to comprehend and pointing to daily special… cream corn pork chop over rice… price unknown and not on the dry erase board… oh well… five minutes and large platter delivered… starchy corn and saucing… over two lightly starched and deep fried pork chops… lean chops and half a centimeter thickness… careful…quite piping burning hot… mountain of rice unable to finish… riced cooked quite dry… sweet corn flavors and starchy saucing all over… careful operation of bone removable and consuming… too much rice to finish… washing with tea and finish…$seven.fifty-five total after tax… dollar and change for tip…$nine millbrae hong kong lunch for one…

Aww man, I really want to like this place and give it a good review. I really do — considering it’s a new restaurant in my town, in a space abandoned a year ago by a dive bar, with a really interesting menu.
However, it deserves 1-​star based on experience 1 month ago. After waiting about 15 minutes for the server, we ordered 4 dishes — a soup, a chicken curry, some steamed veggies, and french toast. The chicken curry came out first about 30 minutes later, and was actually OK (although I bit into what I think was a piece of chipped plate). We had to ask twice about the rest of the dishes. Finally about 10 minutes later the veggies came out — they were gross veggies of the frozen bagged variety, not steamed long enough! We never received the other 2 dishes after waiting another 15 minutes, so asked for the check and left.
They claimed too many people came at once, and ordered too many different dishes. I’m being generous and bumped them +1 star considering they’re brand new, but damn, unless they do some work they will suffer the same fate as the dive bar…

Delicious!!! All the dishes we ordered tastes exactly the way I remembered it to be! The chicken wings, the baked porkchop over rice, the curry beef with rice, the minced beef and egg over rice and the instant noodles!!!

Food is great and the service is excellent. The portions is good for the price. Highly recommend the chicken wings!!!

This place is new, with good tasting food for a great price. The people are nice, friendly and there’s plenty of space for you and your family. If your in the neighborhood stop by! If not, its worth the drive!

A new place serving up Hong Kong style western dishes that comforts the appetite with generous portions and a wide variety on the menu from pork chops, chicken to curry dishes.
Don’t expect anything fancy inside as you can tell the previous business was a bar and the bar that was once there is still there, but the friendly service more than makes up for any lack of ‘ambiance’.
Let’s see, a mixed grill of beef, chicken and pork chop on a SIZZLING iron platter was really good. Select rice or spaghetti as the side dish. The other meals in our party were also very good.
Café VIP Jr. is a place for comfort food at an exceptional value (party of 6 with two sharing, $ 51).
Every table was taken during our mid-​week visit, which impressed me.
I will be back to try the many other dishes.

From the outside, it looks like a bar (from the previous tenant), with a coffee shop looking signage that didn’t scream Starbucks, but not American coffee shop pancakes eggs type of packaging
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Once you walk in, you may realise that it is a Hong Kong café-​esque menu (minus the Cantonese dishes), with more of a western/​fusion slant
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Typical greasy Hong Kong style western «not so soul» but comforting food. But wait, the menu in Chinese says they use less oil, less salt, and no MSG.
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Well it’s not like one can get a plate of dried fried beef chow fun to test wok hay n’ chit, so let’s git some basics to try, while ignoring the value minded set menus on the white board
HK style Borscht soup.- a very decent sized portion with a lot of veggies in it, tho not much in the way of meat. Perhaps this was the healthier rendition, but it wasn’t thick enough to suit my tastes… more meat bones in the soup? More tart from the tomato and/​or tomato paste?
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To drink: Yin Yang… or Yeen Yeung. ½ milk tea, ½ coffee. Caffeine sadism if done right like an Arnold Palmer on $teroid$ (but without the lemonade). But this one was not good… tasted like instant coffee and house tea (lacking any multi leaf blend goodness). On the sweet side, with no steroids.
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Baked pork chop rice ($ 2 additional charge to bake). The base: egg fried rice that was pretty greaseless (good). Three decent sized lightly battered grilled pork chops, smothered with a ketchupy type of sauce that was overall light in flavor. Overall, quite satisfactory although «no msg and healthier» usually means less tasty.
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But good friendly service, seemingly entirely female staffed operation (not sure abou the kitchen).
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Probably a few steps up from the bakery down the street, and perhaps the Orchid place. The problem is that this place is now the 5^th HK style café type eatery around Millbrae (the rest have now been degraded to mediocre), and this is a tough business to survive in. Hopefully things kick up a notch or two here… there’s potential for improvement.

Growing up, my family and I used to always let my grandfather choose where to eat whenever we would take him out for dinner. Since he was a big fan of American food (loved prime rib), we almost always ended up at these Hong Kong-​style cafes and restaurants. With their Chinese take on western dishes, I’ve had my fair share of café staples like noodles and meat sauce (spaghetti), Russian borscht, liver and onions, fried chicken, macaroni soup and more. So when I was checking out Café VIP’s menu on the way to lunch with some friends, it brought back all of these memories from my childhood.
The place has more of a café feel than a full on restaurant, but their menu is pretty extensive — about 100 or so all together. On the lighter side, they have snacks, soups, and salads to choose from, with heavier items like curries, pork chops, steaks, and countless rice/​noodle plates available as well. While it’s definitely not the sexiest of choices, I ordered the Minced Beef with Meat Sauce and Fried Egg over rice (
) since it reminded me of something I used to have as a kid.
When my dish came out, it looked just like what I used to have years ago (hey, I’m not that old!). If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a really simple dish — a sort of cross between meat sauce and stew (heavier on ground beef and lighter on tomato) that’s poured on top of rice (or noodles… which I should have chosen in hindsight). Nothing spectacular or fancy, nor mind blowingly good. Yet, at the same time, it really hit the spot and was just kind of… comforting. Well, to me at least. Of course, the fried egg didn’t hurt either!
Even though they haven’t been open long, I thought the service was pretty good. My waitress was very friendly and attentive, and the cook even came out to ask how my food was. Although I have no idea how the rest of their dishes are, people at other tables seemed happy with their dishes and their food looked decent. While there might be better places in the area, I’ll be back to try more… and to revel in memories.