Northern Cafe

Chinese and Taiwanese fusion foods. Taste so good. One star less because of the soup too much chili so hot…

Their fish is not so fresh, mixture of sichuang and northern style, Not authentic, 请大家不要上当了，真的很难吃！

Good food and excellent price! We had Lamp noodle soup, mix vegetable & mushroom dish„ dried chicken, and Mochi & fermented rice as dessert. All are great! Be aware， the Mochi dessert is very big, enough for 8 people party.

Finding parking in this plaza can be a little tricky because there’s a lot of restaurants and a grocery store nearby. We did have a late lunch, so finding parking spots wasn’t that hard.
What we ordered:
Xiao long bao
They have amazing xiao long bao here! They’re heavenly morsels that are so soft and flavorful. They come out from the kitchen at the perfect temperature and when you bite into them, the perfect amount of delicious broth comes out. They somehow were able to make the skin perfectly soft but it doesn’t break when you pick them up. Their xiao long bao are better than Din Tai Fung’s in my opinion.
Pot stickers
The pot stickers are really good too! I wasn’t very impressed at first sight. But when I bit into it, boy did my opinion change! They have a good stuffing to skin ratio. The best part is that they put a little bit of vinegar inside so when you bite it, you get a little bit of tartness with some juice from the stuffing and it’s just delectable.
Dumplings
The dumplings were pretty good. I’m partial to the fried variety but thought the way they wrapped them was cute.
Stinky tofu
I love stinky tofu and I don’t have complaints here in terms of flavor. I particularly liked the sauce they used here; perfect balance of saltiness. The serving for this appetizer was small to me though.
Zha jiang mian
Of the dishes ordered, I was most dissatisfied with these noodles. The meat sauce was overwhelmingly salty; all that salt took over any other flavored that might have been in the dish. I had to eat the noodles without the ground meat.
Service
We came in at 2 pm and were seated quickly which was fantastic. The restaurant was about ¾ full. However, there really was one server hard at work while the others crowded behind the cashier register. It was difficult to flag down the one server since he was so busy covering all the tables. I’m not sure why the others just stood behind the cashier register, but I think the restaurant would run more smoothly if they had more people working the tables.
Overall, I would come back. I highly recommend the xiao long bao and the pot stickers!
Tips:
–they don’t accept credit cards on orders under $ 30

I had Christmas lunch here with family and it was packed even at 2pm! The servers must’ve had some Christmas cheer because we were provided good service overall.
We ordered:
–Hot and sour soup (4.5÷5, but you can’t really go wrong with this)
–Beef noodle soup (4/​5, No 1 Noodle House is still the best)
–Beef pancakes (⁵⁄₅)
–Wontons in chili oil (⁵⁄₅)
–Sweet and sour pork (⁴⁄₅)
–XLB (³⁄₅)
–Spicy fried chicken (³⁄₅)
The portions here are enormous, I was shocked when the soups came out. Be careful when you eat the crispy beef pancakes — there is so much meat juice in there, you don’t want it to get everywhere! My faves were the first 5, with the wontons really standing out. It was covered in a fragrant sauce and peanut bits, so delicious. The XLB was alright, but probably wouldn’t that here again. My only gripe with the spicy fried chicken was that it had more batter than meat, but other than that, it had a great flavor and was super crispy.
Don’t forget to ask for a stamp card — you get a stamp for every visit, and you get a free dish on your 6^th visit!

Shouldnjave known it was not going to be good when the tea and hot water was lukewarm. The Shanghai dumpling had a thicker skin than I a use to. And it lacked flavor. The dumpling I ordered was suppose to have 3 types of seafood in it but it was filled with green chives. When asked they said it was the 3 seafood dumpling. So you must like chives when ordering the dumplings.

This first time I came here was about a year ago. At that time, the food was perfect and the service was also nice and efficient.
But today, it changed my mind. The food is not as good as it used to be. But it is still delicious. And this place is extremely busy and crowded. I don’t know if the reason why is Friday night or lack of servers. The waiter is not patient at all. I understand that he may be busy for the day, but our customer don’t deserve his attitude.
The reason why that I still gave this place two stars is because the food is still delicious. But the service made me do not want to come to this place again.

After reading the reviews, I was hopeful that maybe just some (okay most Unilocalers) had a bad experience and those were the only ones that left reviews. I now know why… this place is terrible! The food, quality, service, everything… Filthy, low class people opening up a «home style» Chinese restaurant.
The food — just extremely oily! We ordered the beef noodle soup and you can literally see the layer of oil floating on top. Hot and sour soup — where’s the spice? I saw red peppers floating… it was very sour. The dumplings! Geez, where do I begin? The meat filing is terrible, so soft (probably added water to the meat mixture to save costs) and filled with lots of veggies. And the pan fried dumplings? No hint of it ever being on a pan.
The service is the worse. The waiters are blind and don’t even notice your existence. If we order soup, why not give us spoons?
Their storage closet, filthy. I saw a bottle for «egg yellow» food dye. Stay away!!! They dye their eggs!!! Unsafe and terrible way to treat their customers.
The only good dish is the onion pancake.
Stay away folks!

Horrible. Waited 30 minutes for the dishes to show every five minutes later. The dishes we got were: King pao chicken (salty), ja jiang mein (salty). Chinese pancake (very plain) and beef roll (too much sugar). They seem to use way too much salt in their dishes. We were going through the water and teas pretty fast.
The service was okay, the food was no so good.

I’m here because the restaurant next door (earthen) is full beyond capacity. Well this restaurant did not wow me. Staff was not very friendly, I had to get my own menu, and ask staff to come. Food was mediocre, and nothing too special. Don’t eat here, eat at earthen. I don’t care, wait in line. Don’t be lazy and end up in northern whatever this place is called

Sadly, this place has lost all its glory. The quality just isn’t there anymore and service is just ok. You will be better off waiting for Earthen.

Wow. This place is awesome.
My father, mother and I came into this little restaurant at 930. We came in the area to try Earthen Restaurant next door but my mom peaked her head in Northern Café and wanted to try this place instead. I’m glad we came in here instead. It was two minutes from closing but they accepted our hungry selves in.
The vibe was nice. Décor was neat and unique. You can tell the owner is crafty. One thing is that the television volume is too high.
We ordered Gold Pork Ribs, House Fried Intestines, and F4 chili mixed seafood. I’m not sure of the name of the mixed seafood dish but it was f4.
Gold pork ribs were really delicious. Cooked with peanut, chili, onion, and garlic. It’s really delicious. I was surprised. I thought it would be a saucey dish but it wasn’t. More like a fried pork ribs and then stir fried with the chili and yummy bits. Would order again.
House fried intestines was delicious too. It was in a curry sauce with bell pepper, carrot, and onions. Would order again.
The chili mixed seafood f4 is spicy. For those who love northern China chuching cooking. Lots of chili chopped and oil. Has squid, sole fillet, calms, celery. It’s spicy but tasty.
The workers here were really friendly and nice. They charge by the bowl of rice of 50 cent. Since they were closing I wanted to pay right away, I asked to order three bowls one for each, my dad, mom, and myself. She said you guys would just want two instead. I applaude the honesty. 2 extra bowls was more than enough.
I will be coming here whenever I’m in town. In this area, my fam and I just eat korean bbq or new capital seafood as its the only good restaurants for price in our opinion left. But this place is a keeper. Parents want to take their friends here next.
Thanks.

eating Chinese food suppose to be enjoyable moment, isn’t it? I am so wrong when I was at northern café. Service is really bad, unbelievable!!!
I really can’t express how angry I am for this restaurant. Just want to tell everyone, «please don’t go there for wasting your time and money»

If I could give it half a star I would. Service is lousy and food is so so. Here’s what we orders:
Onion Pancake — no complaints
Shrimp wonton soup — hardly any filling and I stress hardly
braised green beans — it was ok
spicy kindney — tasted like it was about to go bad
pan fried dumplings — skin wrapping still partially raw
claims with basil — half the clams didn’t even open
Asked three times for water, they finally brought a bottle of water but no cups, Asked 2 times for cups and they told me to use the tea cups. And I saw three other tables get water after me AND they brought them cups.
Asked for extra napkins, the lady went to go them them and as she was reaching for it she decides to grab a dish instead and serve it to another table and help 2 more tables before getting my napkins.
Finally when asked for the check to pay had to ask them 4 times and on the fourth time the guy told us to wait he’s busy.
Needless to say won’t be coming back, Spend your hard earned money eating somewhere else.

Surprisingly pretty good food! I eat in this plaza a lot, but usually only hit up Earthen and Boston Café. But I’ve actually started to eat here quite a number of times because the food is decently priced, there’s usually not much of a wait, and I have a few staple dishes that I really enjoy. My recommendations are: the lamb flavor hot soup (basically just napa cabbage, vermicelli, and thin slices of lamb in a soothing broth — and it comes on a portable boiler to keep it hot), the torn pancake (fun to eat because you have to pull it in a spiral and it’s super flaky), and any of the vegetable dishes. I’ve tried both the assorted vegetables, which involved eggplant, tofu, mushrooms, bok choy, etc. in a cornstarch-​thickened broth… but I actually prefer the dried string beans because they’re stir fried in a salty black bean sauce, which makes them more flavorful. That, plus not a fan of creamy textures and I’m a purist when it comes to vegetables, so I recommend sticking to the more simply prepared dishes.
I’ve also tried the green onion pancake before, which was good but not great. I’ve definitely tasted better elsewhere, but green onion pancake is surprisingly one of those dishes that’s hard to master — a lot of places make it too greasy, oily, too thick or thin, unsalted, etc. Their version falls right in the middle, but might be a tad better than a few restaurants. The fried fish in sweet ‘n sour sauce is pretty good, although it’s a bit weird because they literally fry a whole fish, so you’re stuck with a bunch of weird parts like the head and eyeballs. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out how to eat this type of stuff for me (i.e. anything that involves navigating bones), so that’s why this isn’t a top pick for me, but I’ll usually order it if my parents are with me, since they like it.
There’s actually a few dishes here that I DO NOT recommend — simply because I feel so strongly about them. The orange chicken is completely disgusting and artificial tasting. I guess I should have expected that from a more authentic Chinese restaurant, considering my Mom told me orange chicken doesn’t even exist in real Chinese cooking… so what is it then?! Hmm, questionable. I also don’t recommend getting the lamb kebabs. The texture is a bit stringy and they use super pungent seasonings — to the point where it almost smells like you’re eating B.O. It’s pretty gross actually!
Overall, I like coming here for the few staple dishes I mentioned above. The service is surprisingly decent for a Chinese restaurant, considering they actually pack up your leftovers for you. They have a stamp card, so if you come here 5 times, you get to pick a free entrée from a list of pre-​selected entrees. The one downfall is it’s cash only if you spend less than $ 30, so either come here with a decent sized party or make sure you stop by an ATM before coming here! Definitely one of the better Chinese restaurants for the area!

One of the best Taiwanese restaurants that I’ve come across! The dumplings and mini buns are definitely not worth it, but there are many other dishes that are really darn delicious.
The top three out of the ten dishes that we ordered was the meat filled pancake, beef wraps, and beef noodle soup. My chinese to english translations can be a bit rough, but the images will show you what they are. Of course, they are a bit oily, but they taste so good. The beef in all of them are juicy and the sauces used were the perfect amount of sweet and salty.
Overall: some dishes are definitely better than others, you just have to know which ones to order. A bit oily, but the taste makes up for it. The service was pretty good. It was pretty busy when we were there, but they took the time to make conversation and get us everything we needed.

Had dinner with the family and some of my relatives from Australia. We were wanting to eat something nice and quick so we decided to try this place out. It was all our first time at this place but I don’t think I would be coming back.
They were pretty busy and I felt that all our dishes no matter what they were, had too much oil in them. My relatives don’t really eat a lot of meat so we decided to order mainly veggie dishes in the hope that they would eat it.
Overall I would say we left a lot of plates looking like we didn’t even eat any of it. Maybe the place was too busy and some of our dishes came out really quick and others took soo long that we were already full before they even got to the table.

Went on a recent man-​date with my boy JY and he chose this little gem out of all the places in Rowland and I was pleasantly surprised… Pleasantly surprised that we actually went out on a man-​date not about the food. HAHA.
Zha Jiang Mian: Delicious. The only way to eat Zha Jiang Mian is with cucumbers and that nice ground meat sauce. The place really hit the nail on the head with this one. I just kinda wish they had more noodles. TEEHEE.
Beef Wraps: Hands Down probably one of the best beef wraps I’ve had in recent memory and when I say that I’m not sugar coating it. Also, a bonus that there is no cilantro in
XLB’s: Yum Yum. The skin isn’t as thin as Mama Lu’s or DTF but I can appreciate the doughiness as opposed to 626DRIFT
*Big ups to JY for picking up the tab even though it was my idea… WHICH REMINDS ME THAT THIS PLACE IS CASH ONLY. $ 30 MINIMUM? LIKE WHAT THE FUCK BRO!!!
*Keep up the good Jay Chou tunes btw. I was getting super nostalgic…
Sincerely yours,
J «Wo ai ni, Ni ai wo».Y

A Taiwanese café. The prices are pretty reasonable and average about $ 7-​$ 8 a plate. The restaurant has about 9 – 10 tables and seats maybe 35 – 40 people.
I’ll admit the food is decent. It isn’t mind blowing amazing, but it does the job on a budget. We ordered quite a few things and everything was average ³⁄₅. I’d probably come back every once in a while.
We ordered some stuff like the beef roll appetizer ($ 6), Fried rice (w/​salted fish, $ 7), Egg plant ($ 7), Spicy pork meat dish ($ 7), grilled squid ($ 7), and spicy wonton soup ($ 7). All of the stuff was decent ³⁄₅.
PROS:
–Cheap Prices. Most dishes run about $ 7-​$ 8.
CONS:
–Food is all decent. Nothing is mind blowing awesome. Everything is ³⁄₅ standard but it does the job.
–Service is hit or miss.
TIPS:
–Located in the same plaza as 99 Ranch Market or Earthen Café
–Card accepted.

I really like the design. It has a very nice feeling– modern, woody, etc. The service is okay, not the best. The food is different for me, but it is good. There are a lot of yummy flavors. I tried the Cumin Lamb, that was good, it was just not hot enough and got cold quickly. The pork dumplings were good except there was a lot of water trapped in them. The beef pancake roll was very delicious, that was my favorite besides the Kung Pao Chicken, that had awesome flavors of ginger, garlic, chili, and more. The sautéed mixed mushrooms were good but it was too much cilantro stems for me to handle. They have very good black iced tea that they give complimentary when checking in. So it was an overall good experience, nothing too extraordinary or horrible. I would like to try one of their hot pots in the future! Good try, though I won’t be coming very often.