Mike's Café — Restaurant in Little Rock

Mike's offers, as far as I'm concerned, the best Vietnamese food in Little Rock. The Vietnamese chicken salad is amazing (photo below): thinly sliced cabbage, pickled daikon and carrot, onion, cilantro, culantro, crushed roasted peanuts, boiled chicken, and a sweet-sour dressing of nước chấm,, lemon juice, piquant red pepper, and a bit of sugar. The portions are enormous; one order is enough for two diners with hearty appetites. Also wonderful is the rice vermicelli salad topped with grilled pork (photo below). The owners and servers are consistently friendly and welcoming, unlike some of the folks working at Mike's main competitor, who looked us in the eye on our last visit then turned their backs and refused to see us for several minutes, as we stood waiting to be shown a table — last time we'll go there. The phos are great at Mike's, egg rolls are crisp and full of flavor.

The Vietnames bánh mì sandwiches are also delicious. The one photographed below is grilled pork dressed with cilantro, strips of cucumber, pickled julienned daikon radish and carrot, and rounds of jalapeño pepper. The menu also promised house butter mayo and soy sauce, but unless those were applied so sparingly as to be nearly invisible and impossible to taste, I didn't notice either on my sandwich.

But never mind: it was delicious as is. It arrived warm — warmed bread and heated slices of pork — and it was a delight to bite into the small crusty baguettes that have to be baked, I would think, in a Vietnamese bakery.

I have to warn, though, that the slices of jalapeño can have quite a kick. So if you don't tolerate hot peppers well, you may wish to have them left off the sandwich or served on the side.

I've eaten nothing at Mike's that...

We usually go to a different Vietnamese restaurant in town, but decided to give Mike’s a chance. The first thing we noticed, on a day when it is 100+ degrees outside, is that they have no AC and not enough fans to make a difference. We didn’t know what we wanted at first. Because there were so many items on the menu, it was hard to decide what to eat. We first picked the spring rolls because we always get those at Vietnamese restaurants. The spring rolls were okay. Not great. But okay. It took several minutes after the spring rolls had been received for them to come back to see if we were ready. We ordered several appetizers and a fried rice meal. Next, they brought out each of the other plates one at a time, as they were finished being cooked, with several minutes in between. The rice was dry and the chicken in it looked plastic. You could tell there was no seasoning. We took a couple bites and left the rest. The fried tofu was awful. Again, no seasoning. We each took one bite and left the rest. One of us had to spit out the one bite they had. We know tofu has no flavor on its own. But they did nothing to give it flavor. The wings I ordered were horrible. I didn’t even get to take a bite because they still had lots of feathers attached. Deep fried feathers…mmmmm… We ended up paying almost $50 dollars for mediocre tea, okay spring rolls, bad service, and horrible inedible food. And they must know how bad it is, because not once did they ask if we were enjoying the meal or say anything about us leaving full plates of food on the table. We will never go back....

I'd never even heard of this place until the other day and I've lived here for most of my life...a few friends wanted to meet up for lunch. The menu is updated and not what is shown on the Google page, which is a huge upgrade because the names of the dishes are in English and have descriptions for those of us who don't know what anything is. The area is a little sketch, but the decor is nice, the store was clean, and the service was awesome. I did not expect the young staff to be so attentive and polite as they were, but I was definitely impressed with them. I ordered a combination plate with fried rice and it was good, but I've definitely had better fried rice. Not that it was bad, per se, it was just not remarkable and a little bland...think "premade frozen bag of rice that I can make at home in the microwave"...well, maybe not that bad...but close. Definitely not what I was expecting after the hype train that was with me told me how amazing everything was going to be. The three different meats mixed in the rice were very good, which made the plate good. For the price that I paid, I was not upset at all, but I wasn't impressed either. I will definitely try this place again and order something different before I give a firm opinion...