Simmer Huang — Restaurant in Bellevue

Long Story Short: “Unique but overpriced hot pot’s cousin with long wait times and cook time.”

• The Beginning: * Came here on Christmas Day and was looking for a place to eat with the family. 2 Adults, 2 small Children. Noticed that most of the other restaurants and dives on this plaza such as Nuodle, Hong Kong Tea Bar, Supreme Dumplings and Spicy Popo were pretty crowded. Most of the wait times were 45 minutes to an hour. Being hungry and out of time, we noticed that Simmer Huang was open but had only 2 tables occupied in the entire restaurant. (Red Flag #1)

However, I noticed some issues. There were a total of six staff on hand. The owner, owner’s wife, two cooks in the back and two waiters. No one was staffed in the front. Thought that was awkward. Service was still slow. Basic water was not brought out until the 15 minute mark after we sat down.

We were given menus at the 5 minute mark, and our order was taken at the 20 minute mark. The owner mentioned to the younger wait staff to take our order. If you are not ABC or speak any Cantonese or Mandarin, it will be a little hard for you to order considering most of their wait staff speak broken English. We pointed to most of the items we wanted on the menu, which was a combo with beef, shrimp, veggies and tofu. Also ordered Fresh Milk Boba and a Hong Kong Milk Tea.

• The Food * Being used to Boiling Point and the types of service regarding the food being cooked and ready to eat when it arrives, the food here is not cooked in the kitchen, but rather cooked at the table using the convection stove. Ok, different I thought. No worries, I’ll try something new. From kitchen to table, it takes another 15 minutes to cook, then the waiter adds the noodles. Noodles take another 5 mins and then the sauce is added. So all in all, we’ve been at the table for almost an hour now and we finally get to eat. The kids are ornery and hangry as hell at this point. Food should not take this long. (Red Flag #2) Hong Kong Milk Tea and The Fresh Milk Boba came out. I was very disappointed. I can tell right away that the milk tea was from powder. If you’ve had high quality milk tea before, you can taste powdered milk tea instantly. The worst was the fresh milk tea. Usually at other establishments such as Happy Lemon, ShareTea or Mustache Milk Tea, Fresh Milk Boba would be accompanied by other flavors and toppings to make it not just a literal cup of milk. We got a literal cup of milk with pre-made boba at the bottom. I could’ve made that at home instead of paying $7 for a cup of milk. (Red Flag #3)

• The Taste * The sauce that they add during the last part of the cooking at the table covered everything with that flavor. I was debating with my wife at the time and despite there being “flavor” it was all over the place. To describe it aptly, everything tasted the same. The shrimp tasted like the sauce. The udon noodles tasted like the sauce. The tofu tasted like the sauce. Everything tasted like the sauce. This is akin to taking a single color bucket of paint and throwing it on canvas calling it “art”.

• The Ending * Overall, the entire cost for that “meal” was $107. For two full-grown adults and two kids under 4 years of age. (The kids barely at anything.) The "flavor" was not worth it, the milk tea wasn’t there and service was to be desired. The owner was nice, but that’s not worth it for me to come back. (Especially for $107)

And before any Chinese Nationals say anything, I’m Chinese too and this place is not worth it. Any full blown American-American’s (if you know what I’m saying…..) Stay away. You’ll get robbed.

There’s plenty of other places like “Boiling Point” (Renton/Edmonds) or “Chengdu Memory” (Chinatown Seattle) or “Dolar Shop” (Bellevue) that give you way more bang...

This is a review for take out. Simmer Huang was a very famous restaurant chain in China, however, I hadn’t tried Simmer Huang until recently. It didn’t let me down. First of all, the food was well packed, which was highly appreciated during this covid season. Secondly, the combo comes with a various selection of ingredients, which were relatively fresh and well seasoned. However I do think they could do better processing the beef cubes, as they had some unusual smell to me. Thirdly, the sauce might be the key of all the dishes in Simmer Huang. It was delicious. But the difference between different kinds of sauces are...

I like their interior decors that talks about history of simmer food. Our waitress is friendly and cooked the food for us. I doubt the service team lied about promotional value - they have a deal on Groupon, however when I showed my waitress the deal, she said she doesn't know about that and asked another waiter, who told us that they never worked with Groupon and I will need to work with Groupon to get refunds. I suspect that they are abusing groupon as a free source for advertising. If you never worked with Groupon and this has happened before, why don't you work with Groupon to take it...