Venus Bakery Café

Came here during busy lunch time with my family. There’s only 2 servers here and of course the service was extremely bad. Sat there over 15mins, but still didn’t get any water or tea to drink. The stars are for the food.

Love this place. Good food and fast service. Come here all the time and never disappointed by food and service!

Ordered a borscht soup to go, got there to pick it up and the guy at the counter said sorry no borscht soup today. What a disappointment

Normally I don’t like to write any review for restaurant even it is really good or really bad, but this time is different, my wife and I used to be a big fan of hk style food since we are from Hong Kong. My wife ordered a fried noodle from the lunch menu and I ordered a meal from today’s special. My wife started feeling dizzy after home, and she mentioned that this is the second time she didn’t feel good after visiting this restaurant.

I enjoy coming here late at night, it makes me think of places in HK. Dim lighting, Chinese drama being played and tons of small dishes to chose from. My usually is the crab and corn soup and a noodle dish, either the beef chow fun or the Singapore chow fun. The crab is imitation but its not a big deal. I like the creamy taste and the perfect seasoning. The noodles are always cooked perfectly and with the right about of veggies to compliment. The bf always gets the curry. It is not your Indian or Japanese curry, it is more peppery than spicy. Food is consistent and prices are reasonable. Would be better if they take CC.

I came here for dinner with my family after picking them up from a Utah bus tour. My parents are familiar with Venus Café but I don’t remember if I’ve tried it before.
The food was decent. The soup of the day had corn, tofu, egg, and imitation crab meat. The complimentary toast did not look appealing and was bland; all the flavor from the garlic and butter was pretty much concentrated in one bite on my piece.
I ordered the XO sauce three meat lai fun. I also got to try the Sampan Porridge, French Toast, and some combo with spaghetti, pork chop, and 2 different sauces. Again, decent but nothing memorable.
Service was lacking. After we ordered our dishes, the server left immediately without asking or even waiting for our drink orders. The french toast came out as the wrong dish originally. My brother just said the dish number instead of the dish name so not sure if they changed the numbers recently or if the server misheard or remembered incorrectly.

Uh. I don’t really want to bash how bad this place have gotten, but their service needs to improve. I used to come here a lot before the original owner left. The food is acceptable, but I wished their portions are bigger. Most their menu is range from $ 8 – 13. I usually come during their happy hour from 3pm-​5pm. The price is slightly cheaper, but not much, maybe a dollar or two difference. But you get 1 free drink, if you want the drink to be cold then you’ll have to pay an extra $ 1. Is it worth it??? not really.

This place isn’t as good as it used to be. When the bosses aren’t here the employees seem to slack a little. It’s evident in the amount of people here that the food is slowly getting worse too. It’s not terrible, so it’s still worth coming here, just wouldn’t be the number one choice if there are other options. The drinks are great though!

I like the variety here and it’s open late. They are HK café style in that they serve milk teas, chicken club sandwiches, macaroni soup as well as more classic Chinese food. I had double mushroom and greens. The sauce was average, but the quality of mushrooms and texture/​cooking far exceeds like Panda Express. It can have a fun atmosphere and is reasonably priced.

Their birthday catering was AMAZING! I was very skeptical initially, and was thoroughly surprised at how nice and easy it was to work with Mr. Chan, the service and overall experience working with them. My mom mainly helped me order she kept complimenting them.
Their catering food choices were great. Do not follow in my footsteps because I over-​ordered like crazy but I ordered $ 300 (4 med, 1 large tray) of food to feed 80 people for my son’s 1^st birthday party. There was a good variety of rice, noodles and appetizers to choose from. They also have vegetarian dishes as well. The food quality was great, and they came on time to help set up all the food before my guest arrived. If you rent the burner and stands however, you will need to return them to avoid a charge. If I ever need to cater for another event, I will not hesitate to come back here.

First time eating at this place. Good tasty food! Loved the stir fried pork belly and the baked pork fillet with salt & pepper. My wife loved the chow mein with shredded pork. Service was quick.

This place used to be a good HK café but it’s getting worse and worse.
They have raised their prices constantly and they seemed to decreased the portion size 20% less than before especially the popular baked pork chop rice.
Did I mention service was below par and always understaffed.
Even the plaza is dying off.
Sad that this used to be my #1 HK café in the East Bay.

3.5 stars!
I was never really interested in trying Venus Café, but I was craving Hong Kong style food and was on the hunt for some Hong Kong milk tea so I finally gave this place a try. I stopped by on a Saturday night and it was packed which was a good sign!
They serve garlic toast and soup with your meal free of charge! I wanted to like my Hong Kong milk tea but there was more ice than the actual drink. I would consider ordering it again with less ice, but I wouldn’t say it was the best Hong Kong milk tea that I’ve tasted.
I ordered their sizzling ramen noodles with egg, spam and black pepper. So delicious and filling! The dish comes out piping hot on a skillet. I love that they don’t skimp on the spam. Their portions are generous, so it’s enough to share or have left overs to take home.
I didn’t experience any problems with their service. They were busy, but it wasn’t a problem to get someone’s attention. They stay open until 1am which is convenient because it’s hard to come by late night restaurants in the east bay. I sometimes find myself craving their sizzling ramen and would readily return for this dish alone!

Likely in a move to contend with all the new competitors sprouting up around town, Venus has now introduced a family style menu in addition to the HK café fare we know and love. Your choice of three items will run a cool $ 24.88. Dishes on top of that can be had for an extra $ 8.75 apiece. Also included are soup, bread, and dessert. From my personal experience, it is a more than adequate amount for three average sized adults.
On a recent visit, my two lovely companions and I ordered Mixed Seafood & Tofu in Clay Pot, Minced Beef & Eggplant in Clay Pot, and Baked Pork Fillet w/​Salt & Pepper. To be 100% honest, I was not expecting a whole lot, and certainly not anything comparable to what is offered at more traditional Chinese restaurants.
Wow, I was quite impressed! Portions are generous, and nothing is overly greasy. As a matter of fact, Venus’ biggest local rival, Cousin Café, has indeed served this type of fare for many years, but is also much more expensive, and quite fattening to boot. When I was often with a group, and we were not in the mood for the HK style rice plates, Cousin was our go-​to spot. However, based on my first impression with Venus’ rendition, I can safely say that I have found a suitable replacement.
For the rest of the menu, please reference the photos I have posted. The only caveat is that these are only available from 6 – 9 pm, so it may not work for all you night owls out there. Perhaps this is simply a test run to gauge the popularity, and if it becomes a hit, these items will become more readily available at all hours of the day.
Update: I returned with the same two companions a week later, and also tried Stir-​Fried Eggplant & Chicken, Braised Beef Brisket in Clay Pot, and repeated the Mixed Seafood & Tofu in Clay Pot. More of the same goodness! The only disappointment was that they «ran out» of dessert, and made no apologies about it.

SOMETHING DIFFERENT OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE
I came here to eat last night for dinner. I read Unilocal reviews about certain items such as the baked pork chop over rice and baked seafood rice. When I looked at the menu there were so many items to choose from — almost 150 food items. I took more than ten minutes to look at the menu. I initially wanted baked seafood rice as main dish and honey mustard wings as an appetizer. On the appetizer section I noticed the item corned beef and egg sandwich. I assumed the corned beef was the Hormel version, which is shredded and cured, I hated growing up. I don’t what overcame me but I decided to order that item because of the egg. I can’t help it I love eggs. For the main dish I decided stewed pork chop with corn and steamed rice with white sauce. Usually I have fried pork chops so I wanted to try what stewed pork chops tasted.
To my surprise the first dish I got was the stewed pork chop with rice and white sauce. The stewed pork chop was deceiving as the pork chop was slightly fried due to the caramelization. However it was still delicious. The white sauce looks heavy but it adds a sweetness to the dish along with the corn. The second dish was the corned beef and egg sandwich. As I suspected the corned beef was the Hormel version. If it wasn’t for the the fried egg I wouldn’t finished this dish. The fried egg masks the watery texture of the corned beef. Across from me I noticed a lady ordered what appeared to be the honey mustard wings. Those wings looked more appetizing than my corned beef and egg sandwich. Maybe if I come back here again I’ll order the honey mustard wings.
Overall my dinner was okay as I liked my stewed pork chop with rice, but hated the corned beef and egg sandwich. Sometimes if your try something different you might find a pleasant surprise or you might hate the dish similar to a hit or miss concept.

On the day after Christmas, we had their Christmas special. 3 dishes for $ 24.88, including soup (a sweet Luo Song soup) and dessert (green bean soup).
We ordered the seafood tofu clay pot, the e-​fu noodles with mushrooms, and baked curry pork chop over fried rice.
The seafood tofu clay pot was stuffed with lots of fried tofu that sops up all the tasty broth. Solid offering. The e-​fu noodles were mildly flavored, and was generously portioned. The baked curry pork chop had lots of pork, and a lot of fried rice. There was some melted cheese on top of the curry pork chop, but I didn’t necessarily taste much of it as I ate. Seriously a good deal for so much food.
This is probably one of the better deals in town in terms of bang for your buck for good homey Cantonese/​HK-​style food.

Love this place!!! Authentic Chinese/​Cantonese food; fairly priced; quality is pretty consistent every time we went. Environment and atmosphere are decent, too.
It is a nice 茶餐廳 that I would recommend to all my friends. Their 海南雞飯 and 肉醬意粉 are both very tasty :) It is especially good for a casual meal or gathering.

Pretty decent for HK style café, I find myself coming here pretty often for lunch since I work in the area, despite the fact of slow and understaffed service. Inexpensive and really decent portions. Probably not a single dish that I did not enjoy, a lot of their noodle dishes, whether stirfry or in soup form are pretty good; comfort food, if you will. I’m a fan.

Venus café has been around for decades and is a popular spot for HK style café in the area
Service is non existent like most Chinese restaurants and you have to yell at your waiter to get any orders through. Cleanliness does not seem to be a priority also as the utensils, plates and cups are dirty and sticky.
We ordered couple late lunch specials to share. They consist of the infamous baked pork chop riceplate, stir fry rice dumplings, fish fillet and toasted sandwich. Nothing really stood out but they weren’t bad also. My complaint is our complementary milk tea were way too sweet.
This spot usually opens till 1 to 2am. Alright spot if you are looking for food late night otherwise most likely wouldn’t return. CASH only!

Food is good but they constantly keep raising their prices for the lunch specials. I’ve been here a million times, and it’s honestly only worth if you come in during business lunch hours or during their «afternoon snack» hours when they have specials.
Customer service is honestly kind of awful, even for a Chinese restaurant. I am a true believer that if your server never checks on you and the only way to get service is to flag someone down, that’s how you know they’re authentic. It’s bad but at least they are efficient. But Venus? They are constantly forgetting to give you drinks, soups, garlic bread (the last two come with your meal) even after telling them. If they run out, you’re SOL and they don’t make any more but you’re still paying the same price. One of the menu says you get dessert with your meal, but you don’t. One time, I asked them for my garlic bread and the server told me they ran out, but the table next to me got it 5 minutes later.
Their competitor, Fairwood (across the street, next to McDonald’s), is also a Hong Kong style restaurant, opened by Venus’s owner’s sister. Their food is similar but their service is MUCH much better. And you get rewards there for free stuff if you spend up to a certain amount!

Holy goodness, get the baked pork chop rice with the two sauces and chicken wings combo!!!
I could care less about the greasy old chicken wing, but the sunny side up egg and the pork chops? YES! That moment when you scooped the steamy sauce and egg rice with a hint of runny yolk… *drool*
The pork chop was well breaded and goes better with the red sauce instead of the creamy white. This might be on my top list of baked rice pork chop in the bay area.
We also ordered the porridge with fermented egg and pork. Such a comfort food for the first meal of the day. I feel like I was in Hong Kong again. I always thought the hustle and bustles and the the table sharing of this kind of places is part of the charm.
They also served warm tomato based soup before the meal, awww. Way to go to prep my tongue and tummy for the main course.
$ 17 (cash only!), a bag full of leftover, and one hour later we exited the place with happy belly.

Standard Hong Kong Style café. Food is not exceptional but very good value. Black pepper beef spaghetti was good. Hainan chicken meal was good.

This place is a hit or miss place in Unilocal.Since I was hungry after work and not having very many options close to midnight I wanted something other than my usual super burrito at Taqueria Los Gallos. So I tried this place and I was quite satisfied with my meal.
THE MEAL:
I tried the number 7 lunch meal (which coincidentally is also served after 9pm) pork chops over rice and covered in some type of mildly sweet red sauce. I have got to say it was actually tasty and the pork chops were tender. It would’ve been better if it were spicy so I added some hot chili oil to give it some kick (highly recommend you make it spicy).
This meal comes with a complimentary HK style hot milk tea in a metal chalice and for an additional $.30 you get condensed milk which is a must. It was delish.
THE SERVICE:
The employees were all young kids which seem like it was their first job so I’ll cut them some slack since their professionalism could be better. They look like high school kids doing minimum wage effort. We’ve all been there (well, most of us have).
Didn’t have too much of an expectation going in since I was cautious with all the negative reviews but I left satisfied. Given the limited options this late at night, I’d say this place is worth a shot. It’s inexpensive and the servings are quite large. It’s comfort food for those who grew up in SE Asia.

Food is too greasy and heavy for my taste. Doesn’t sit well.
Service is somewhat rude and they will make you feel rushed to order.

I used to love coming here for late night meals, but over the past few months, their service has dwindled tremendously. I am Chinese who does not speak Cantonese. Often I understand that if you speak the language of the restaurant, you will probably get better service but I feel that I was pretty mistreated. There were many occasions where I had to flag down a waiter to take my order and often times they would look at me, look away and just walk pass me. Talk about rude?
One time there was some sort of food wrapper in my soup and the waiter did not even apologize for that. Today I did not receive a soup spoon for my soup, so I kindly asked for one but the waiter said they were in the process of «cleaning» them. Ok, then how come I see other customers get a soup spoon with their soup? Does that even make any sense? I asked again and the waiter said «sorry still cleaning».
I finished my meal and the waiter said «sorry». Sorry my butt. While I noticed Cantonese customers were getting treated nicely, I do not even get treated decent.
Their food is pretty good but with my recent experiences here, sorry Venus, you have lost a loyal customer. Bye.

TERRIBLE. My boyfriend had been coming to this place for a long time, and he introduced it to me. We would come here quite often, since it’s open late.
For the first few times it was great. Good service, food was good, etc. However, the last 3 times my boyfriend and I and some friends went, they forgot numerous items we ordered. The first time, I was like okay it happens. But 3 different visits to this location and it keeps happening?! YEAH NO. One time they forgot to bring out my steamed rice. How do you forget to do that? I notified the waitress I was still waiting on my steamed rice, and how did she bring rice to two other tables before ours?! We are not the rude kind of people, we always were kind, patient and they still seemed to neglect us and not provide us with the same exceptional service we’ve seen in the past.
Sorry not sorry. Done with Venus.

Delicious food at reasonable prices. Service here is alright, they seat you right away and are fast to take your order, but sometimes you have to call the waiter over to take your order if you take a little bit longer to read the menu, which I don’t mind.
They have a wide variety of menu items which is pretty cool. I have tried a few different things off the menu, but my favorite is definitely the pork cutlet in red & white sauce. The pork breading is nice and crispy, and the two sauces, which taste great separately, are even better when mixed together! But you could eat it however you like :) The red sauce is a tangy tomato based sauce, and the white sauce is a creamy cheesy sauce. It’s also a pretty generous serving size. I was kinda surprised the first time I ordered it lol
All in all a nice place to grab a bite if you’re feenin for some hk style food. They’re also open fairly late which is another plus!
The iced lemon tea is also very good! It has a refreshing taste that is not at all watered down (the asian in me even debated whether or not I should pour some water in it to dilute it myself lol) but it is perfect as is! Not too sweet and comes garnished with a few lemon slices which I like to crush at the bottom of the glass with my spoon just to get an extra bit of lemon flavor in there!

So it’s been a few years but I did come back.
Service is still whatever, but they have a menu with smaller versions of their popular items, and believe me, it was still more than enough food! Thanks to this menu the husband and I were able to enjoy the baked pork chop, chicken wings, HK iced milk tea and some other things without overstuffing ourselves.
Open late, cheap, close to home — always a winner.
CASH ONLY!

You know the saying, «Men are from Mars and Woman are from Venus… Café». Well, that has no relevance to this review… Please ignore that. I’m trying to be more clever in my reviews.
Okay, came here after an awesome day of trampoline jumping and drinking the night before. We needed some comfort food for our aching bodies. Venus Bakery Café didn’t quite hit the spot, but we left very full and for a good price.
We ordered the french toast, Portuguese style baked rice, and some porridge.
French Toast — It was
. Not your typical french toast though, they freaking put PEANUT BUTTER in-​between the toast. YES, PEA-​NUT BUTT-​ER. Good stuff. Loved every bite of it. They only give two pieces per order, so order two.
Portuguese style baked rice — It was okay, I was a bit disappointed. Some of the veggies weren’t fully cooked and the sauce was lacking flavor. I wouldn’t order this again.
Porridge — I forgot what kind of porridge we got, but tasted like a typical porridge. It wasn’t too thick or watery. The flavor was pretty light and definitely needed some white pepper in it. My friend said that they typically put ginger in it, but we didn’t taste any. It was a decent rice porridge, nothing mind blowing.
We paid about $ 20 for all three items and specialty tea drink. We were really full and had a good amount of leftovers.
Service was fast, but lacking. You sorta have to flag them down every time you need something, and that can be a task.
To summarize, food is decent, prices are good, service is lacking.

Came here April 15, ordered the Chef’s suggestion item. Menu shows includes soup, garlic bread, dessert, and drink.
Entrée served but still waiting for the soup and bread, waited several minutes and the waiter didn’t look like giving me the soup and bread. Ask for the items and he said they stop serve soup and bread to the customer once the happy hour menu started (after 9:00 pm).
What??? I’m ordering from the regular menu at the regular price, and the items IS INCLUDED IN THE MENU. Fine, I’ll take the word, that’s my fault by coming to the café at happy hour time but not ordering from the happy hour menu!!!
After I finished the entrée, wait for the dessert and the waiter seems not going to serve me the dessert. Waved my hand for the waiter again, and he said they NO LONGER SERVING DESSERT NOW. Paying the FULL PRICE and got only HALF OF THE ITEM LISTED.
Terrible service, if you are not going to serve it as a set, don’t put it on the menu!!!

The number 1 is so delicious !!! It’s a must try. You can either get it with spaghetti noodles, rice, or half and half! I tried all 3 ways and my favorite is with spaghetti noodles ! The white and red sauce is just soooooooo delicious. Thinking about it makes my mouth watery ! Haha give this dish ⁵⁄₅
I would always come back here to get this dish.
The service was decent .
I came back one time during lunch. They had a lunch special. It consisted of the main dish as well complimentary milk tea, tomato soup, and garlic bread. I got the meal that was similar to the number 1. For some reason it wasn’t as good as the number 1 (even though it had the red and white sauce too). It also came with different types of meat. The meat was good but isn’t as good and juicy as the number 1. 3.8÷5