Rice Bowl — Restaurant in Sugar Land

--- NK Score = 7.0/10 ---

6/10 = Furniture/Ambience 8/10 = Food Quality 6/10 = Service 7/10 = Price (Other Ratings Hidden) =( BASIC INFO )=

Medium Size Restaurant Usually Empty, Casual Decent Food ( $8.00 - $15.00 ) American, Chinese, Indonesian Average Prices, Depends Easy Parking Accessibility = Atmosphere =

Casual dining, the interior is calm and quiet even during dinner hours. Everything was pretty normal except for the table I had, it was sticky, like improperly cleaned and unsanitary. Other than that, all else went fine and the ambience was pretty good. = Food Quality =

--- Rendang Sapi ($14.95): 3/5 --- A rather interesting dish, the curry was very flavorful and had a strong aromatic scent. The beef had a very nice texture as well, especially when mixed with the sauce. Now, here's where it went downhill, there was only 4 pieces of meat, and the curry portion was brutally small for a whooping $15 price. Honestly, it's a good dish, but probably not worth the price.

--- Kwetiau Siram ($8.95): 4/5 --- Mmm the flat rice noodles were pretty good, chewy with a nice, soft texture. The sauce was very flavorful and dense, it had a semi-sweet and savory taste that resembles some creamy cake, but more noodle like. Portion is pretty good, enough to fill you up and the ingredients are well balanced.

--- Chicken Noodle Soup ($5.95): 1/5 --- Don't dare touch this dish... it's a bland monstrosity with flavorless potential, like it could cure all your problems because it's probably super healthy! But noooo, it's just so tasteless that you'll regret every penny that you spent on this magnifying doooom! = Price / Service =

Prices for some dishes are pretty average while the others can get a bit expensive. The portion size varies depending on what you get, some dishes are rather small while others are pretty decent.

Service is not very attentive, like I'd say there's hardly any service because the cashier seems to be the server? Maybe it was just a slow day. Miscellaneous (Other): Tables could be sticky Chinese + Indonesian Menu

Signed NK (July 2017) Images below by...

THIS REVIEW IS FOR INDONESIAN FOOD, thought I'd save time for those looking for Chinese food review, I haven't had any. I will certainly give them a chance and revise my review as I have more of their food. As an Indonesian, I sure would want any Indonesian restaurant to succeed. But this is not even close. I ordered four items to go, and when I arrived, there were 4 people waiting for their orders, none of them Asian. So I get it, they have to cater to the American taste. I wish there was an Asian place who would cook the way they need to cook it, regardless of the Americanized taste, as I believe there ARE Houstonians who travel enough to look for real Asian taste, and not the White-version of them.

First, the gado-gado is missing key items. Yes, there are versions of this dish, but it should have boiled egg, cucumbers, cabbage, bean sprouts, and various other veggies, then pour peanut sauce on top. This gado-gado is missing the 4 items I mentioned. And gado gado should NOT be fully cooked like this... it's a salad version of Indo! and I've never seen gado gado with carrots before. I took this home and boiled some eggs and sliced some cucumbers to add to this, to make it something close to what it should be.

The Mie Ayam doesn't have the key items that make it Indonesian food. On the website picture, this dish had beef balls in the soup part, which is the way it should be. My order didn't get any. The cooked chicken looks more like Kung Pao chicken (the real thing should be white, not brown!), coated in some sticky sauce. Again, I am being generous here by not blaming them, perhaps spices and ingredients are not available in Houston. The taste is 180 degrees from any Mie Ayam I've had, whether in any islands or other states in the US.

Drinks: the iced coconut drink -- Es Kelapa -- literally had 3 pieces of coconut meat with coconut water in the cup!!! You know, any Mexican place in the area can sell you a whole fresh coconut for under $4 bucks! I took this home and made it more Indonesian by adding crushed ice and rose syrup.... again, that's the way they serve it back home.

Their noodle dish is more Chinese than Indonesian. I bet if I ordered the noodle dish from the Chinese menu and their Indonesian menu, they would taste the...

You would think it shouldn’t be that hard to find an Indonesian restaurant in Houston that has approx 2000 Indonesian residing in this city. There have been several trying to try their luck, but It seems they couldn’t sustain. So here I was, trying Rice Bowl II in the furthest of Westpark tollway of Bellaire, and honestly, we did not set an expectation.

First, there is no signage showing Indonesian Restaurant but just showing Chinese Restaurants. Going inside, It has a minimum ambience, or no appealing decoration inside but 2-4 wall decors, a big size of an aquarium in the corner and a Becak (just google it). It was just a plain big size of place with clean tables, uninspiringly.

We were greeted by a lady (whom I found out later she speaks bahasa) sitting behind the desk looking a bit tired. It has 2 menu options (Chinese and Indonesian menus) which you have to ask if you want to see for the latter.

We ordered beef satays, gado2, fried noodles, krupuk, Soto Betawi, and fried chicken. Are we that hungry? Perhaps 😋 basically we wanted to try the overall meals.

A friendly looking waiter came and asked politely whether four of us wanted to sit on a bigger table while placing clean plates and the utensils. The beverages are all self service from the fridge, it has all kinds of canned soft drinks, Jasmine Teas or Teh Botol they called etc.

It didn’t take long for the meals to be served (less than 10 min) while we snacking the shrimp crackers (krupuk). All meals came warm, fresh taste (for the veggies /gado2), and all items were surprisingly tasty and it has the correct taste.

We decided to come again after a month and this time we tried the beef rendang, and my spouse who understood this specific meal mentioned that it was well seasoned and had the right meat (you need to try it if you want to have a great introduction of an Indonesian meal). The tired looking lady came to our table and checked on us to see how’s all the meals, she even fixed one order and apologizing for a minor mistake they did. I appreciate that effort.

If you don't care about ambiance or the far distance (from downtown/midtown) I’d recommend this place if you’d like to treat yourself a good Indonesian meals. Oh and I heard their Chinese food...