Smile House Cafe

Bad customer service. Prices increased a lot since they opened. But good food. Great late night spot to hit up after going out with friends. Another downside is it’s cash only. Good food barely makes up for all the downsides.

Got the hot plate steak Monday daily special.
The cream of corn soup was way too sweet.
The entrée steak portion was decent. However, the sauce added to the rice was too sweet and the steak was not marinated or seasoned at all.
The jello that comes with the daily special is awful. It tastes synthetic and is rubbery.
The green tea snow with egg pudding tasted okay, but the egg pudding was teeny.
The waitresses were nice though!

Should be called Frown Café. I came in at 1130 with half the tables empty but still had to wait and wave down an employee to seat us.
Male server came to take our order after two minutes but we weren’t ready since there were mb a hundred items on the menu.
After a few more minutes we told the same male server that we ready. He nodded and went to help some other customers get seated. He then proceeded to help another table with their order.
After a few more minutes I ended up waving a female server instead to help.
My order came and was the wrong item and had to send it back. The food was just ok and their quality has definitely gone down since coming here when they first opened.
Even for HK Café standards this place is pretty bad.

Food is okay at best, not truly Hong Kong style food but decent. It’s a bit pricey for what they offer. Service takes a long time and the customer service can be a lot better.

Poor service!!! Wrong order for three times!!! The food are terrible and small portion. The cost are not worth!!!

Taste: 4 Portion: 5 Value: 3 This is my new favorite HK restaurant! The menu is so huge that it basically has everything from Sizzling Platters of Raw Meat to Unique Desserts!
I ordered the Prawn Spaghetti in Black Truffle Cream Sauce. I doubt it was authentic truffle, but my entrée was delicious with or without it. Tried the Clam Chowder with Extra Puff Pastry Soup. They’re generous with the clams. And I got a Lemon Black Currant which was quite refreshing. I’m definitely coming back here to try everything on the menu!

Very clean Chinese style restaurant with modern decoration, spacious space and wide option of food.

Underrated. This HK style café is on par with the best ones in Hong Kong. The menu is a best hits album of the most mainstream, trending foods in east Asia. Taiwanese shaved snow. Have it. Sizzling plate. Yes. Baked beef tongue with white curry. Yep. Chinese desserts… yes; Taiwanese shaved ice, coconut noodles with mango, and probably the… BEST…HK…STYLE MILK TEA I had in awhile. Almond tea was really good too. I had the hainan chicken & rice (fun fact went to Hainan and no such think as Hainan Chicken there) and it was a little underwhelming, chicken was riddled with bones, and the rice lacked flavor. But the people I was with had a great time with their plates. It’s popular. So there will be some wait time. But the workers there hustle. Great place for casual outings with close friends or a no frills but still good Hong Kong meal. Price is reasonable over all.

Don’t expect good service when you come in and its full house.
I only come here for their iron plate steak plus black pepper sauce.
Their milk tea is good but too concentrated for my palate, and super Cue is right across the street. So I go there instead.

Smile house café is an Asian cuisine, causal, late-​night hangout restaurant. It is not a fancy or high-​end restaurant. I usually come to Smile house café after 10pm, when most restaurants are closed, but I still want a warm home-​cooked meal.
I love how affordable this place is! If your on a budget, this is your go to place! Large portions of noodle entrees can be shared, family style. Some of my favorite picks are: truffle pasta, sizzling beef platter with fried egg on top, and champagne milk tea!
Others have said the service here is rude, but I think the opposite! Waiters are quick, straight to the point, and they don’t bother you constantly during your meal. One notable, kind act of service here is when my friends and I wanted to order more food when the kitchen was about to close, but the waiter let us have the last order!
Pros:
–open past 12am!!!
–great for big groups/​lots of seating
–big portions
–good drinks!
–hard working servers
Cons:
–medium quality food
–can be busy/​slow

This place has an extensive menu that will literally take about 5 – 10 minutes to look through. They offer a variety of different types of food done in Hong Kong style.
As they offer so much, they are at the same time not known for any specific dish either. Thus the Wonton Noodle Soup, Lobster Chowder with Puff, Yellow Chicken with rice and the Corn Chowder were all okay. They were filling; not bad and not memorable.
WONTON NOODLE SOUP: Although it was decent the portion was alright but could have been bigger. I probably wouldn’t order this again since King of Food Garden at Irving St. has better freshly made wonton noodle soup.
LOBSTER CHOWDER WITH PUFF TOP: It’s a bit stingy to charge over a dollar for a puff pastry top however I do enjoy the soup more with it. The lobster bisque tasted ok, very smooth as if from a can. There were two pieces of shrimp and no lobster chunks at all. It tasted more like lobster flavoring than actual lobster.
All in all its an OK place to dine. If you’re not looking for a place to WOW you but just to get you full and through the day then this place is for you.

I had been coming here for certain menu items that I like. This is despite the service which up to now had overall been not great but tolerable (even by HK-​café style restaurants where for some reason always seem to have bad service). However, I felt my experience here today is bad to the point where I have to reduce their star rating. Very inattentive service by almost all their staff. The one instance that particularly upset me was when the older middle-​age lady amongst the group provided the menu by tossing it onto the table from my behind. That was very unprofessional. (I know she’s been around a while and was never great and at least wasn’t bad to this point until this instance.)
Unfortunately for me, this will be another place where I’ll continue coming because I feel like certain food items from here but have to brace for bad service. Hopefully it doesn’t the level of ABC on Noriega or D&A Café on Clement St which tops my list of being the worst in service and behavior but that I still find myself going to at times.

To be honest I am not impressed by this place at all. The place is basically a fast food store. You order, eat, and leave. Don’t really have any services. If you are telling me that the waiter/​waitress are taking orders and bring you foods that’s service. I think this place need a lot more trainings going on for their employees. Otherwise, it’s not really a sit down restaurant, it’s a fast food restaurant with bad food.
As we walked into the store, we were seated fairly quickly. The waiter gave us the menu and we were sitting there for like 15 minutes. You may asked, how come we didn’t waved our hand to grab the waiter and/​or waitress’ attention. Well, we did and they pretend they didn’t see us until our friends about to speak cantonese with them. We ordered the 4 hot-​steel plate rice thing and some chicken wings to share. The hot-​steel plate were not brought to the table 4 at a time. The waitress brought one over and we told them we have 3 more. She gave us the look like i know but her tones were like really? We waited for like another 10 – 15 mins for the other 3 plates to come… After that we waited for like 45 minutes for our chicken wings. I know how to cook chicken wings, and the fresh chicken wings wont really take you almost an hour to cook!!! Especially if the restaurant is using a deep fryer…
Overall, the service experience is terrible. I would not leave any tips if i am eating here by myself. The question is, am I coming back to this place at all? Probably not LOL
Let’s talk about the food. My friends actually been to here before and they love the hot-​steel plate rice with beef (basically is the same idea as pepper lunch). They told me that’s like the one thing you have to order if you come to this restaurant. But this is like the worst food I ever had. Don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think HK food are on a sweet side at all. They are all about flavors. But this hot-​steel plate beef rice thing, I don’t see anything represent HK.
— The restaurant pour so much oil on the hot-​steel plate to cook the raw beef but then they also added a big chunk of butter for adding flavor. Guess what? You are eating a big puddle of oil (Butter, vegetable oil?, and beef fat). YES, YOU ARE BASICALLY JUST EATING OIL & FAT
— As for the flavor, I don’t taste anything beside sweetness. It’s like am i suppose to be eating some kind of dessert? But this aint no dessert. This is a main course food. Why does it taste like I am eating a cake or something? I dont taste nothing but sugar and the sweetness from corn!!!
As for the chicken wing, we ordered the salt & pepper flavor. The chicken wings didn’t eat taste like salt & pepper flavor. Guess how it taste like? IF YOU ARE GUESSING SWEET!!! THEN YOU ARE CORRECT. Shouldn’t salt & pepper flavor taste salty but not sweet? Or is the chef just on drug and couldn’t identify their ingredients?
I don’t know, the food is terrible, chef probably don’t know what the heck they are doing. Service is also terrible (this run through mostly asian restaurant and idk why). Overall I wouldn’t recommend this place to anyone. But if you want your vein to be clot up by fat & get diabetes from their sweet food, then be my guest!

This place follows the trend of good SF Chinese Restaurants going downhill. My relatives and I loved to come out here on a late Weekend night after their kids went to sleep (11pm, well I guess that pretty early now I think of it as a college student). It was one of the few places that stayed open late in the Sunset. We also loved the shaved snow and crapload of choices that you could get at this place. The waiters weren’t super mean to you (at least from the 4 plus times I went there). It wasn’t that amazing, but it was decent.
My last experience here at Smile House Café was a letdown. We all like to share our dishes – one relative got wonton soup $ 5.75, another had mango snow ice, I had Smile House Special Baked Pork Chop over fried rice $ 8.95. And here’s what went wrong:
WONTONS: SAND in it. I cannot stand sand in shrimp. Big NO NO one of the unforgivable sins of using shrimp.
MANGO SNOW ICE: TASTELESS – one kid exclaimed (ok, yea we let that kid stay up with us), «it tastes like nothing!» and indeed it did not taste like much. I was so saddened. Smile House Café was my goto place for yummy snow ice, but now that snow ice wasn’t even tasty. The extras on the side – jellies, mango, coconut jello – weren’t able to mask the tastelessness of the snow ice.
BAKED PORKCHOP – it was OK but honestly nothing worth noting. It filled me up and that was it.
They took a lot of the good stuff off the menu – like sweet black rice and fruit dessert combination. And they got rid of a lot of the snow ice choices.
Bottom Line: I find it hard for me to come back. I came for the snow ice, expecting a SMILE on my face, but I left with a FROWN.

I came here on a Thursday night around 10pm and it was still super busy. We had to wait for our seats and the waiter was clearly occupied because it took a while for him to come take our order. We also didn’t get our hot tea until we mentioned it near the end of our meal.
The food was alright. It satisfied the late night hunger since it’s open so late. I got the hainan chicken rice. The chicken was pretty good not super amazing or anything. We also got the housewarming combo dessert but I wasn’t too impressed with it.
There seemed to be a large variety of dishes too try so I’ll sure I’ll be back.

Last Sunday, I wanted to head to Smile House Café for lunchtime. Going there is the only way to bring back memories of what my family and I have been eating in Maxim’s Express of Hong Kong. I had to ride the L Taraval to get there, but since it’s past 3pm, I had to get inside, choose and eat quickly so I could come back home to help my family.
Upon entering, I had to write my name on the waiting list so my name would be called. In few minutes, the waitress had found a table for me (hmm, she hadn’t smiled that much). Anyway, I sat behind the high definition TV showing TVB series? Bummer! Can’t believe I had to turn my neck in order to see it.
Now to see the big menu. Variety! Oh, there’s something new I haven’t seen: cereal genmaicha milk tea! I might try that on my second visit. Then, there’s many posters of what I like to eat. How ’bout the four different colored shaved snows? Nah! I barely have time for a dessert. So I quickly called on a waiter and ordered the iced Ribena blackcurrant with lemon and seafood pasta with squid ink sauce. The blackcurrant was one of my favorite childhood flavors. Neither Honolulu Café nor ABC Café has one.
Just when I enjoyed the few sips of my blackcurrant spritzer, it didn’t take long for the waitress to hand a big plate of seafood pasta (service is quick; not with the smile). Few bites of pasta; normally delicious! Asparagus, shrimp, and the rest of it, all smothered in real squid ink sauce. It’s one exotic dish I highly recommend.
After finishing the whole meal, I paid $ 20 to cover up the total of 19 something dollars. Just when the waitress handed me the change, she needed me to give an additional percentage of tip. So I handed $ 10 to her and how much tip do I left out in return? Then she asked if it’s my first time being here. She also asked is it okay to leave a $ 1 tip, and I replied yes. Good service! And finally, a smile! I’m good with people I talked to.
I walked out of Smile House Café with a smile on my face.

A restaurant that serves smaller Asian eats and desserts that are pretty satisfying despite the poor service.
I’ve had the beef plate, hot pot, and champagne milk tea and all were decent. The beef plate serves thin slices of raw beef with a cooking plate and rice and corn. It’s slightly less quality than Pepper Lunch. The hot pot was a little small but had enough meat and veggies to be a satisfying set. The milk tea just came in a fancy bottle, nothing else special.
I’d come back if I want a small entrée or dessert!

SMILE CAFE MAKES ME SMILE!
This place is amazing. Lunch, dinner, and dessert are alllll 5 stars! The low reviews here are ridiculous. You can’t compare the food to Asia. They have a very wide variety and EVERYTHING is delicious and reasonably priced. Come here and leave with a Smile

One of my newest favorite HK café. The ratings on Unilocal fooled me into thinking this place is horrible, but surprisingly, it’s actually pretty good. I think if you speak cantonese to the waiters, you may get better service. I’ve been here multiple times and the service was always attentive and they sometimes strike up small talks with me.
The food is better than your average HK café and I like it more than Shooting Star. Their menu is fun and diverse, ranging from hk baked dishes to mini hot pot to pepper lunch to mango desserts. I really really like their seafood soup with puff pastry. It’s one of my childhood’s favorite dish… and the fact that they serve it here deserves a star on its own. I also tried their hainan chicken rice and the yellow chicken rice was delicious and the chicken was smooth. Their desserts here are pretty good too, on par with Kowloon Tong.
Another note, this place opens till 1 — 2am! Don’t come here expecting the food will be the bomb cuz it won’t. But I definitely don’t think it deserves the low ratings, maybe 3 — 3.5 stars would be more fair. I will be back though. :)

They say a woman’s intuition is never wrong. Well in all honesty, it’s true. I always had a feeling that this place was not a place that I would enjoy. When you first walk in you will see some worn down chairs in the waiting area. This just gave me the feeling that this place wasn’t so clean. The waiters here didn’t give the absolute best service. They didn’t really acknowledge people when they walked in, so I was standing there for a while before getting seated.
The menu was pretty big, they had a variety of dishes. There was Singaporean, Malaysian, Chinese, and Taiwanese. They have hot pot here too, but it is only between 9 pm and 2 am. They have a different menu for desserts only and they have several durian desserts! Woohoo! So for the main menu, I ordered the hainan chicken and a noodle dish with beef. The hainan chicken was weird. It doesn’t even come close the the dishes in Singapore. the rice had a weird taste to it. Tasted like it was cooked in very artificial seasoning. The noodle with beef was super salty. I couldn’t even eat more than 2 bites
For dessert, I had the HK style french toast. I never had this before, but I didn’t know there was peanut butter inside. There should’ve been a food allergy warning in case. I also got the black Sesame and almond soup and Durian pancake to go. The waiter had a lot of attitude. «oh you want it to go, I won’t heat it up for you, since it will be cold when you get home» Wow! Talk about being lazy. What if i live a block from here! So what earned this place 2 stars instead of 1? It was Durian Pancake. It was pretty good, of course not as good as the ones in Hong Kong and Singapore. Overall, the smile café turned my smile upside down. The service and food was disappointing and the bathrooms there so gross! I will probably only get the desserts to go and avoid eating here.