Top Cafe — Restaurant in San Jose

I've passed by this place many times but never tried it, decided to finally give it a try. The restaurant is about half full when I came in, I seated myself in a booth. Took a while to get the menu and order, there were 2 servers but 1 was also making drinks so it was difficult to get their attention. I was hoping to get lemon coke as their complimentary drink, since both lemon tea and coke were in the free selection, however, the waitress vetoed it and I got the red bean drink instead. The red bean drink came relatively quickly, though it's nothing to write home about. It tasted quite watered down, but it's free so can't complain. Took a while for my baked fish dish to come, but that's probably to be expected for a baked dish. The complimentary soup never showed up, and I didn't want to deal with flagging down the waitress so just let it go. The fish dish itself was pretty good, and reminds me of all these HK cafes I've visited in the past. Not sure if I'll come again. Service was very slow and it gave me time to look at all the flies flying around the tables. This may be a good choice if you are looking for food at odd hours, but I wouldn't make a trip to come as there are many other...

It's midnight. Your friends and you have stayed in too long or the movie went late or you just got into town and you need your fill of Chinese. One place will have your back - that's Top Cafe.

It doesn't look like much, and it isn't classy or dotingly good service. But for a good chow fun or a fast, filling Jook, it's always solid. If you can't tell, they're a very Cantonese Chinese, and even have staples of Hong Kong English cuisine like spaghetti, Horlick, and macaroni if I recall - but I just go for the Chinese dishes which are always fine as advertised and very affordable.

Top Cafe has its place - it's not going to impress the neighbors and it may not even be your go to for Chinese in the area, but when the hour is late and you need good food, it will be here (because if you haven't caught on, they close at 3 am). The place never seems empty but parking is ample and there's never a wait.

It's not easy to find a place that's reliably good and there in a pinch when you need it. And if that's the situation you find yourself in, these folks will be...

Well for starters, I felt that the environment felt restricted to only a certain group of people. As a Mexican American, I felt very out of place as most people were staring at me and the person that was accompanying me. The food was served quickly which was one positive characteristic. However, I believe that the food could have been better since the rice felt a bit dry to me. The person who was with me did appear to enjoy the food though. What really made me really flabbergasted was that after we were finished with our meal, we were forced to tip the restaurant! Now it's the middle of the night, I appreciate that they are open so late, but I just don't like being forced into things. The lady at the cash register stepped out of line with her demand. Since we didn't want to argue with her or make a show out of the situation, we ended up tipping due to her outrageous demand of us being forced to tip. I don't know about you, but I am a person willing to tip for good service and good food, but this...