Arte Cafe — Restaurant in Bellflower

TLDR; Awful experience, raw/extremely undercooked shrimp, risotto had large raw chunks of onion and the consistency was similar to porridge, all meals came out extremely late, service was horrendous, and no management in sight. STAY AWAY!

To start, I feel that 2 stars is GENEROUS based on the experience that I had with my girlfriend's family before the Dave Koz Christmas show. We show up and are seated early - great, more time to look at the menu. The server then did not come over to speak with us for 15 minutes. After putting in orders for drinks (waters, a tea here or there) we didn't see anyone for another 15 minutes and had to flag a waiter down. The place was not busy - yet the waiters seemed to not be able to keep up with 5 total tables across 3 waiters.

After putting in an order for food (and correcting mistakes made after the first round of interaction), we were approached 20 minutes later with the news that they are out of the Squash Soup. Great, would have been nice to know much earlier, but we quickly adjusted. We let them know immediately upon entering that we had a show to make at 7pm, but the service did not speed up. During all of this, a table behind us up and left as they had not been served, and another was audibly expressing their disgust with the food...

We finally get our meal, mine in particular was a seafood soup, and the cream used within it tasted completely turned (imagine spoiled milk) and the "prawn" that was supposed to be in it was completely raw. It grabs some residual heat from the lukewarm soup, but that was it. Needless to say I was not finishing that. The horror story continues as nearly every other order at our table was messed up or the food came out cold/prepared very improperly. You just should not be serving uncooked, under-cooked, burnt, etc food to people at any price - much less the ones they charge here.

This was a beautiful Christmas Tradition that has finally been sunk. When I asked the family if this has happened before, they mentioned that last year something similar happened but it was much busier so they figured it was stress from that. Whose to say, but I for one will not be going back and I advice you to...

The food is average, and expensive for being average!

I actually wanted to go to Cafe Camellia in Bellflower but it turns out they are closed on Mondays. My sister found that they had another location called Arte in Cerritos, so here we were with my fam for my birthday dinner.

Our entrees ranged from $18 to $29 and we all felt "meh" afterwards. Not something you wanna spend 20-30 bucks on. We had:

jumbo shrimp and scallops: The size of the shrimp was decent, though don't expect "JUMBO". I enjoyed the creamy sauce in this dish.

my cajun new york steak did not taste cajun. It was very plain. And for "medium", I found it very tough to eat.

As for the sides, the mashed potatoes were chunky and dense. The vegetables were lightly cooked and still crunchy. The rice tasted like asian rice.. which is pretty plain with non-asian food. Overall, pretty plain and average... nothing stands out.

I enjoyed the dinner rolls, which were freshly baked and served to the table still warm with some soft butter.

The service was good, but.... I called ahead for party of 6, the restaurant was pretty much empty, and they seated us in a secluded area right next to the bathroom... WHY -__-

And why is this place listed...

Good: Friendly service, decent cocktails, wine variety.

Bad: bland food, TV dinner quality, overcooked.

We were disappointed. For appetizers we ordered the beef pot stickers. It was nothing special. The pot stickers tasted like they came out of a box and then "zapped" in a microwave.

My wife had the clam chowder and I had the minestrone. The soup and the clam chowder was served lukewarm-almost cold, and tasted like it came from a can.

Finally, for our entree's, my wife had sea bass, rice and vegetables. I had their special: NY steak, scallops, mashed potatoes and assorted vegetables. The scallops were overcooked and had a rubbery texture. Sadly, the steak lacked flavor and the mashed potatoes were cold.

I did not taste my wife's food. However, she said her sea bass was bland and that she would never recommend Arte Cafe to her friends or family.

Bottom line: Don't waste your time or money. We should have eaten at Rubio's (across the way from Arte Cafe). Cerritos could do...